Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Reasonable Effectiveness Of Mathematics In The Natural Sciences, Nicolas Fillion

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

One of the most unsettling problems in the history of philosophy examines how mathematics can be used to adequately represent the world. An influential thesis, stated by Eugene Wigner in his paper entitled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," claims that "the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve." Contrary to this view, this thesis delineates and implements a strategy to show that the applicability of mathematics is very reasonable indeed.

I distinguish three forms of the …

Analytic And Topological Combinatorics Of Partition Posets And Permutations, Jiyoon Jung

Theses and Dissertations--Mathematics

In this dissertation we first study partition posets and their topology. For each composition c we show that the order complex of the poset of pointed set partitions is a wedge of spheres of the same dimension with the multiplicity given by the number of permutations with descent composition c. Furthermore, the action of the symmetric group on the top homology is isomorphic to the Specht module of a border strip associated to the composition. We also study the filter of pointed set partitions generated by knapsack integer partitions. In the second half of this dissertation we study descent …