QuiversWhiskers wrote:
Welcome. What is pure mathematics?
Pure mathematics is regarded as the study of mathematical objects in itself, with no immediate application. You develop new mathematical systems, axiomatize those systems, create conjectures, and prove them to get meaningful theorems from them. Or you can study mathematical systems already constructed, and analize if they are consistent or not, and what could be changed to make it consistent. In reality, most pure mathematics eventually find its way out, and have some real application in the physical sciences. Given that, even though pure mathematics is purposely completely abstract mathematics which is not interested in physical phenomena, but only the ideal world of mathematical objects (in which you can imagine any object and study its characteristics); every idea we have is founded at least in some part, on some abstraction of a physical object. Most mathematicians regard pure mathematics as one of the purest form of art.
But I do enjoy studying applied mathematics, even though those branch of applied mathematics that I enjoy, are highly related to pure mathematics. I'm very interested in non-equilibrium thermodynamics of irreversible processes. A branch of physical-chemistry that borrows topics from mathematics like the study of dynamic systems, chaos theory and complex differential equations; and use concepts from physics and chemistry, to study not only physical-chemical systems, but also biological and social systems.
24 Jan 2015, 8:06 pm
Welcome!
