FlexiLingo
PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to:http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime In his essay “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics”, the physicist Eugine Wigner said that “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious”. This statement was inspired by the observation that so many aspects of the physical world seem to be describable and predictable by mathematical equations to incredible precision especially as quantum phenomena. But quantum phenomena have no...
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So does that mean cats are made of math too?
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And so are you.
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Is this episode right for you?
C1 · Advanced
Fast, dense and idiomatic
- 79% of the words are B1 or easier.
- 118 words a minute: slow, clear speech.
- 151 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.
Transcript
The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.
harder words (B2+)
Cats are curious and fluffy. They're also made of cells that are made of molecules, that are made of atoms, that are made of particles, that are made of quantum fields. But quantum fields are neither curious nor fluffy. They have no subjective qualities and have questionable physicality.
They seem to be completely describable by only numbers and their behavior precisely defined by equations. In this sense, the quantum world is made of math. So does that mean cats are made of math too? If you believe the mathematical universe hypothesis, then yes.
And so are you. In his essay, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics, the physicist Eugene Wigner said that the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious.
That was the opening. The rest of the episode (21 min) is in the player: every word clickable, with translation, saved words and flashcards.
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