The number of hypotheses we’ve proven, mostly. Also, we have this whole field of non-Euclidean geometry. And the modern Pythagoreans are a lot more chill about people knowing the irrationality of Pi.
The difference is that if something is proven mathematically it’s 100% certain and will not change. In other sciences you may be taught things that later turn out to be flat out wrong.
A lot of sciences find core assumptions were not complete or based on the wrong thing. Health practices that have been around for millenia, like like food safety and sanitation, were successfully implemented using the wrong causes because they addressed the real causes. While they were not called science, they still used the same practices of comparing outcomes in the ways available at the time.
Bloodletting was originally to let out evil or something, then was used in formal medicine successfully but the cause it addressed was incorrect. Now we have much better ideas of how and when it helps to make it even more effective, but the underlying reasons and the methods changed completely.
But math does change, and it has a lot in the last 1000 years.
Has anything changed in Euclid’s Elements?
The number of hypotheses we’ve proven, mostly. Also, we have this whole field of non-Euclidean geometry. And the modern Pythagoreans are a lot more chill about people knowing the irrationality of Pi.
Math doesn’t change, we just learn more about it.
The mathematical knowledge we had thousands of years ago is still true, and it always will be.
Isn’t that true of almost all the sciences?
The difference is that if something is proven mathematically it’s 100% certain and will not change. In other sciences you may be taught things that later turn out to be flat out wrong.
A lot of sciences find core assumptions were not complete or based on the wrong thing. Health practices that have been around for millenia, like like food safety and sanitation, were successfully implemented using the wrong causes because they addressed the real causes. While they were not called science, they still used the same practices of comparing outcomes in the ways available at the time.
Bloodletting was originally to let out evil or something, then was used in formal medicine successfully but the cause it addressed was incorrect. Now we have much better ideas of how and when it helps to make it even more effective, but the underlying reasons and the methods changed completely.