Mathematics

Few of us appreciate the scope of mathematics. The air around us is filled with radio waves. But we did not detect them in the air. They were first predicted by a set of mathematical equations. As Robyn Arianrhod says: "they were mathematically imagined into being, you might say, because physicists then went looking for physical evidence of their existence. When they found it they learned to produce these waves so sucessfully that no one with a television or moble phone aerial doubts the waves exist, even if most of us do not understand what they actually are."