Is math really the language of science or is it a myth?

Answer 1

Maths is not that necessary for all science based subjects, but to study some subjects such as Physics, maths is indeed the language of it. Without maths physics is lame. This is because in most of the time the equations of physics are derived and expressed in terms of mathematical equations. The equations of general relativity derived by Einstein are nothing but the result of calculations!

Math comes into many areas of science. Computer Science is a good example. Computers are based on math, and not just in the sense we can use them for doing calculations. They use logic, an area of math, and binary is essential to them and appears in so many ways that people don't realise. For example, in modern spreadsheet applications, such as Excel, there are 16,384 columns and there are 1,048,576 rows. Those both seem like fairly random numbers, but they aren't. If you start at 1 and keep multiplying by 2, you will come to 16,384 and later to 1,048,576. They are powers of 2. 16,384 is 214 and 1,048,576 is 220 and that relates back to binary. There are many other examples of numbers that are common in computers that also are 2 to the power of something.

You could go into many other areas of science and find links to math, even the natural world. So yes, math is very much the language of science, even if you don't always realise it. A good knowledge of it will help in many areas of science.