Is mathematics the root cause of the greatest misunderstanding in physics?

[Nereid]

The question's too vague - as several have noted ... 'misunderstanding' as in Joan Gin&Tonic or Joe Sixpack don't understand physics, or when physicists try to communicate with other scientists, or among themselves, ...? So I voted 'other'.

However, if we're talking the general public, then my vote would be 'it isn't physics in particular, all sciences suffer from the same general problem' ... very poor understanding of what scientists actually do, what the limits are to what their results mean, ... and what the nature of the scientific method actually is.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Call misunderstanding within the scientific community "Type 1 Misunderstanding", and misunderstanding of science issues by the public "Type 2 Misunderstanding".

Can anyone give a genuine example of Type 1 Misunderstanding? For example Einstein vs. Bohr re Quantum Mechanics was not a misunderstanding, but a disagreement on the issues.

Misunderstandings of Type 2 can be laid at the door of ignorance, whether due to schooling or due to willfulness. For example the Creationists' misunderstanding of Thermodynamics.

 

[One and Zero]

I think the most misunderstanding in physics is because of mathematics:
Perhaps, the most essensial assumption for developing the physical theories is that Nature is in consitence with mathematics (as a true-false logical statements).
I believe, at least QM (in first step) shows that this consistency may not be necessary. Though the structure of QM has based on mathematcal statement but note that this logical structure has been using to describe somehow "un-logical" quantities, like probability, which essensially could not be involved in pure algebra and true-false logic structure.
Success of QM in explanation of phenomena's in small dimensions show that our logical structure (our today true mind) is not able to understand the nature in small scales. Other hand, we could explain perfectly the behavior of the nature in ordinary scale by classical theories. Other hand of the other hand!, we have "learned" to think in this way, or equivallently, our "true mind" has structured in this way, because we could be trained "only by nature" itself. That's why we could explain the phenomena's in ordinary scale: because our "true mind" has trained in ordinary scale nature!

These three points together, suggest that perhaps we would have a very different logical structure (true mind) if we were living in small scale or in very large scale.

As we all know, we happen to see the nature by ordinary scale eyes! Now, the way that I imagine is try to understanding the "logic" in small scales and the "logic" in large scales and then develope our "true mind" to a generalized logical structure.

BUT: today physics, yet, try to explain everything with ordinary trained "true mind" (true-false mathematics). So, that's why I think the most misunderstanding in physics is MATHEMATICS!