Obviously I haven't read the PDF file with Chs 1-8, which may take me a while - but I do (mildly) take issue with this assertion.
Mathematics is merely a description of nature. Nature can operate mathematically (adverb), but cannot be claimed to ‘be’ the mathematics. Being predictive with/using mathematics does not prove nature is made of it. I deal with nature itself. Not maths. When you realise this you end up with dual aspect science. A 3 tiered epistemic framework practical for science This is of course the position that science has taken for the past few centuries without realising that there was any alternative. However, now that Max Tegmark (and of course Bruno) have argued that there is an alternative, simply *claiming* that nature cannot be made of maths no longer cuts the mustard. It's true that maths being predictive doesn't "prove that nature is made of maths" because as we know, science doesn't set out to prove anything, especially not sweeping ontological claims. But it still seems quite possible to me, at least, that Max may be onto something, because as he points out his theory explains the "unreasonable effectiveness" of maths in physics - so I will be interested to hear some counter arguments that explain this effectiveness on a non universe-is-maths basis. So far I've seen a bit of handwavium, but generally I've been underwhelmed by the alternatives presented to explain this, which leaves Max's theory out in front in terms of explanatory power, as far as this particular issue is concerned. Not that there aren't problems with Max's theory, of course. (It's mind boggling for a bear of little brain like me to attempt to grasp how it could possibly actually work....) But it does seem plausible enough to deserve decent counter-arguments. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
