The Ontological Role of Applied Mathematics in Virtual Worlds

Abstract

In this paper, I will argue that with the emergence of digital virtual worlds (in video games, animation movies, etc.) by the animation industry, we need to rethink the role and authority of mathematics, also from an ontological point of view. First I will demonstrate that the application of mathematics to the creation and description of the digital, virtual worlds behaves in many respects analogously to the application of mathematics to the description of real-world phenomena from the viewpoint of the history of science. However, from other aspects, the application of mathematics significantly differs in this virtual world from the application to real-world fields. The main thesis of my paper is that the role of mathematics in the digital animation industry can be ontologically different from its usual role. In the application of mathematics to digital virtual worlds, mathematical concepts are no longer just modelling tools, forming a subordinated, computational basis, but they can direct and organise, and even create non-mathematical theory, something that we can call, for example, digital physics and biology. I will study this new, creative role of mathematics through some concrete phenomena, specifically through gravity. Our conclusion is that the animation industry opens an entirely new chapter in the relationship between (digital) sciences and mathematics.

Keywords

• applied mathematics
• virtual worlds
• virtual reality
• animation industry
• paradigm shift