True, but what I'm pointing out is - imagine parabolas never predicted movement of anything, or imagine that math itself never had any prediction power in the real world.
The self-consistency and the aestethics and the ability to prove statement inside itself would all be just a bunch of symbolic games, much like poetry or crossword puzzles.
You may argue that that, in itself, is powerful, in which case fair enough. But that "power" would be comparable to that of poetry or painting, which, in my opinion, does a disservice to the true power that mathematics holds. Mathematics is much more powerful than poetry and painting, because poetry never helped us build nuclear reactors.
You may argue that that, in itself, is powerful, in which case fair enough. But that "power" would be comparable to that of poetry or painting, which, in my opinion, does a disservice to the true power that mathematics holds. Mathematics is much more powerful than poetry and painting, because poetry never helped us build nuclear reactors.