• Math,  Roy Clouser,  Worldview

    Numbers Need Worldviews

    1+1=2. What has this got to do with worldview? Surely math has no need of a worldview, 1+1=2 in any worldview. Roy Clouser argues that 1+1=2 might be true in any worldview, but why it is true varies tremendously. Clouser considers the options and spots a mischievous assumption – all mathematical theories depend on a religious assumption. To see this, Clouser asks us to consider what a number is. There are two main approaches to this question (Clouser has a few more, but I will focus on a couple for the purposes of brevity). The first option is to say that numbers are real things in another dimension of reality.…