Is mathematics a science?

Math is simply a symbolic means by which statements comprised of symbols are either accepted or rejected, based on whether or not they can be constructed through a process of certain valid transformations from certain a priori axioms.So it is a language; that is, a symbolic representation of information with grammar. Math has a very specific, rigid grammer, in fact. The grammar of math can be studied and operated with no recourse to the actual referents described by the symbols.For instance, 2 + x = 4 can be solved for x without recourse to the actual meaning of any of those symbols; that's what makes computation possible. Your computer does math not because it knows what "2" or "+" mean but because it's been programmed with grammatical rules that tell it what transformations to apply to that string of symbols. Not so. The very fact that you're sitting at a computer that does math proves that this isn't so, and in fact, is a pretty good indication that math is something different than science.But to me it's pretty cut-and-dry. Mathematical knowledge is supported deductively; scientific knowledge is supported inductively. Two different worlds.Math is not science.

Symbolic logic is mathematics. Mathematics, as I'm sure you must know, is more than just number theory. Boolean algebra could be considered basic mathematics restricted to the "values" 0 and 1.Even the name "boolean" comes from George Boole, the mathematician who invented what he called "the calculus of logic." Logic (formal logic, at least) and math are the same thing, a connection that has been make starkly clear by the work of mathematicians like Russel and Godel, and others. Which is pretty much what I said. Mathematics is a language with a strict grammar - so strict that it ensures that properly-formed utterances (defined in math as "derived, via valid transformations, from accepted axioms") will be meaningful, even though they can be formed via the grammar without reference to their meaning.

No, they're not. Isn't that sort of the fatal flaw in mathematical platonism? That the axiomatic conditions that mathematical reasoning depends on are ultimately arbitrary? Not to be uncharitable to math platonists but their position seems to be based more on a need for their work not to simply be logic puzzles and symbol games rather than an actual "math" that exists somewhere in the universe.

Well, maybe your problem is the way you read the news by having someone toss spinning newspapers right at your face:

I appreciate you taking the time to reply to me specifically but, as usual, I didn't understand a word of what you said.