Just what is the world made of? It’s such a short, simple question, but it’s a question that we still haven’t finished answering. Our answer has developed as our knowledge progresses – from thinking that everything is made up of “elements” at the time of the Greeks, to the idea of atoms and chemical elements, to today’s view that the building blocks of creation are subatomic, fundamental particles. It’s a view that represents the culmination of thousands of years of scientific enquiry. But is this really the final answer? Is it possible that something deeper lies beyond our current understanding, perhaps something that shows that the fundamental fabric of the universe is not material at all?
Mathematics and the Universe
Is mathematics simply a conceptual tool, or is it the fundamental material of the universe?
10th October 2015
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Dzen_o 5 November 2015
“Is mathematics simply a conceptual tool, or is it the fundamental material of the universe?”
- a next discussion on the IAI that remains be inside the mainstream-philosophical / mainstream/ physical approach; which implicitly eventually is reduced to many thousands years ontological problem “what is Matter?”. Including:
“…the very neat way in which mathematics describes the universe in this theory has led some, like Peter Atkins,…to think that mathematics itself must be the fundamental reality of the universe. To him, the universe is immaterial at heart...”
- this declaration isn’t something new , that had been clamed by Pythagoras yet 2500 years ago as some quite natural inference from evidently observed adequacy of the mathematics at describing of external (for humans) Nature; and recent versions of this claim don’t contain some additional essential features to the Pythagoras;
and such a situation occurs first of all because of that in the mainstream philosophy and physics there is no answer on the question above and so because of the absence of criterions – “what is/are material?”.
So - a next time on the IAI (see Dzen_o posts in a number of other topics):
– the questions above are Meta- mainstream- philosophical/ physical and so can be answered only in framework of the informational (“The Information as Absolute”) conception, where it is shown that everything, all what exists/ can exist / “doesn’t exist”, is/a re some informational patterns that are elements of the absolutely fundamental and absolutely infinite “Information” Set. Including Matter is only some specially organized informational system, i.e. a subset of the Set, which is observed by elements of another informational sub-Set “Consciousness” , i.e., by humans’ consciousnesses. At that Matter is the system where all elements are built and exchange by some messages when using true information exclusively – in contrast, say, to the consciousness. Just therefore mathematics that is essentially built in accordance with criterions of truth, self-consistence, etc. becomes be quite adequate at describing of Matter.
Including there is no problem in “…Perhaps the ultimate building block is not a speck of matter but a string that vibrates at different frequencies,..” – if the string theory is true then the strings are some “specks of matter” and nothing else.
That is another question, which is mostly terminological, though, – is the mathematics only a convenient language or indeed in depth any material object is some mathematical formula?
Cheers
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