Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
Keiran
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Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Keiran »

When I was a kid I was told that the Big Bang was a huge dramatical explosion, that came out of nowhere, from an unknown cause. Basically how the average person naïvelly conceives it without really caring about it.

Later, when you avoid theism and think a bit in term of physics, you realise that the Big Bang is really just the stretching of a space of undefined (absurd) size. And you can even draw the inflation as a pretty curve, slowing down as time moves on, separating matter until it has enough space to start forming the delicate shapes of the galaxies and molecules we need to be alive.

I am no physicist or mathematician or even fluid English forum writer. But when I ask myself, why and how does anything come to existence, and look at the world around me, I can only think of mathematics. I started recently studying at a computering university and the first thing we were taught is an introduction to the vast Theory of Ensembles. Instead of teaching it in a formal and boring way the teacher had some sort of spark in his eyes and way of talking about it that made me realise that there's more than just applications to this theory, there is also a special way of thinking, some sort of philosophy. That, everything that exists is merely an ensemble or an element, that can be conceived separately, or apart of a bigger ensemble.

Intuitively, around us, it seems that everything obeys to mathematics. Like, something took all those elements and ordered them in a special, absolutely mathematically coherent way. It seems that never, a triangle would be made without the hypotenuse equal to the square root of the sum of the squares of the two other sides. And never you can put something in a box and have it empty without taking it out. And always "B implies A" implies "not A implies not B".

Is the Universe made of these things, or is the Universe, you know, these things?

When you do computering, you realise than what you get is merely what you give. That nothing is going to appear on the screen if you don't planify every byte of it. That the machine will never do more or less than what you tell it to do. When you're only the user things seems kind of magical, but as the developer I can tell you, we're merely talking about exchanges of electrons and a strong bijection between binary data stored within transistors and human ideas, allowed by a perfect mathematical coherence of everything that appears to exist. And almost no genius in that, except that no monkey, dog or cat would have thought of doing it.

My point in all this mess is, many beings in many Universes - humans, theists, atheists, chickens - are struggling to understand what exactly it is that they are in. Humans for example know little about physics. They don't understand how the Big Bang works. They think the Universe was made by a man on a cloud, because it got written by an homo-sapiens on a sheet of paper. They ask questions, they call things mysteries. They are naïve, and they get everything wrong, all the time.

To me, our Universe and all the others make perfect, immediate sense and there is absolutely no mystery, as I conceive them simply as a mathematical ideas. That's right, the Universe is a number, a piece of logic, or more seriously refered to as an "ensemble". It exists just like numbers like 1,2,3. No more, no less. What it gets is what it gives. Those numbers are merely what they are, and you can't really do anything more than biject them with other things. On the other side, our universe is really **** big, because that's what we need to be alive. We need a lot of matter, we need time, a huge stretching of both of them called the Big Bang, we need some interactional luck called biology and there we are, born out of numbers.

Colors and sounds are only vibrations, conscience is only mechanical chemistry... All, every thing, every action that defines us can be written down and reproduced in a bigger universe and it would be exactly the same with no magic salt whatsoever. Universe and mankind ARE mathematically conceivable and that means they don't need to be summoned, or actually exist, to be what they are and to what's inside, exist.


You might call me obvious on some points, but this way of thinking answers a lot of questions that people are still calling mystery out of ignorance.

Alien life? Statistically of question. Nonono, it doesn't happen twice here. Mathematics are (mostly) empty of life.

God? Unneeded and absurd.

Size of our Universe? Null.

The beginning of Time? Everything is eternal.

Time at all??? A mere relation within an ensemble of distinct sub-ensembles.

What does your heart tell you???? Nothing, it's a goddamn heart for *** sake, it beats, it doesn't tell things to people.
YIOSTHEOY
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by YIOSTHEOY »

Looks like another math fan trying to shift into Philosophy.

Math does not exist. It is merely an imagination within the minds of humans.

There are no "laws" in mathematics only definitions.
Surreptitious57
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Surreptitious57 »

The universe is not mathematical but physical as maths is an abstract discipline. But the laws of physics that explain observable phenomena are written in mathematical form. Though one should not make the mistake of confusing the map with the territory
A MIND IS LIKE A PARACHUTE : IT DOES NOT WORK UNLESS IT IS OPEN
YIOSTHEOY
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by YIOSTHEOY »

Surreptitious57 wrote:The universe is not mathematical but physical as maths is an abstract discipline. But the laws of physics that explain observable phenomena are written in mathematical form. Though one should not make the mistake of confusing the map with the territory
You are quite correct and I completely agree.

I usually also like to remind people that there are no "laws" of nature or of the universe. We call our inductive inferences "laws" but they are not really laws. These so called laws all get changed often enough to remind us that the are just our guesses about data we have collected from observations we have made with our telescopes like Galileo, microscopes like Vanleeuwenhoek, and other instruments that we use.

In Newton's day no one had ever escaped the Earth's gravity. Since then we have learned about rockets and escape velocity and therefore that what goes up does not necessarily always come down -- at least not back to Earth. Some are stuck on our Moon. Others are falling towards our Sun. The discovery and conquest of escape velocity has since negated the "law" of gravity -- at least as Newton foresaw it here on the Earth.

Of course there really does seem to be gravity out there, but if a spacecraft could get far enough way from the Sun then it would stay out there and never return to the Earth or to the Sun.

These "laws" are all just in our minds being our own creations -- same as math is -- same as time is -- all things that do not really exist except in our minds.
Surreptitious57
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Surreptitious57 »

Although I cannot prove it I am sceptical with regard to maths being of human origin. Now the symbols are human however I do
not think the discipline itself is. My reason for thinking this is that it is so perfect it could not have been invented by us. Whether
or not it was cannot be proven and probably never shall be. Which is why it is such an interesting question for the best ones are
those without a definitive answer or in this case none at all
A MIND IS LIKE A PARACHUTE : IT DOES NOT WORK UNLESS IT IS OPEN
Steve3007
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Steve3007 »

YIOSTHEOY:

Your assessment of the nature of physical laws is not too far wide of the mark, in my view. As you seem to be suggesting, they are not prescriptions. They are descriptions based on the assumption that the patterns we've observed in our past observations will continue in the future (Induction).

But this is wrong (the part I've highlighted in bold):
In Newton's day no one had ever escaped the Earth's gravity. Since then we have learned about rockets and escape velocity and therefore that what goes up does not necessarily always come down -- at least not back to Earth. Some are stuck on our Moon. Others are falling towards our Sun. The discovery and conquest of escape velocity has since negated the "law" of gravity -- at least as Newton foresaw it here on the Earth.
The whole point of Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, following on from Kepler's laws, is that it explictly does apply to such things as escape velocity and orbital mechanics. It is Newton's laws that are used to place satellites in orbit and people on the Moon. You can use Newton's laws, and nothing else, to create computer simulations of gravitating bodies. Newton used his own laws to correctly calculate the Earth's surface escape velocity.
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Atreyu
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Atreyu »

Surreptitious57 wrote:The universe is not mathematical but physical as maths is an abstract discipline. But the laws of physics that explain observable phenomena are written in mathematical form. Though one should not make the mistake of confusing the map with the territory
Well put.

But remember, "physical" is also part of the map....
Steve3007
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Steve3007 »

In the interests of fair attribution and intellectual property, I feel I should point out that the expression "mistaking the map for the territory" was (as far as I'm aware) coined by Obvious Leo, circa 2015.
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Atreyu
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Atreyu »

Steve3007 wrote:In the interests of fair attribution and intellectual property, I feel I should point out that the expression "mistaking the map for the territory" was (as far as I'm aware) coined by Obvious Leo, circa 2015.
lol, indeed. Too bad he left us....
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Rr6
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Rr6 »

Atreyu wrote:But remember, "physical" is also part of the map....
Metaphysical-1 and phyiscal/energy are in eternal complementation to each other.

O complements 1.

Man complements woman, optimally at 90 degrees.

Convex > (< concave are eternally coexist.

Inside finite occupied space Universe, and outside finite occupied space Uni-Verse.

And then there is that little bit of occupied space Universe, that separates inside from outside, Fuller would say. I call that the buffer-zone of gravity and and to whatever degree, dark energy.

r6
"U"niverse > UniVerse > universe > I-verse < you-verse < we-verse < them-verse
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Alec Smart
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Alec Smart »

Rr6 wrote:
Man complements woman, optimally at 90 degrees.
Other positions are available.
Smart by name and Alec by nature.
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Rr6
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Rr6 »

.....outside 2D triangle../\....outside 2D triangle....

.....outside 3D tetrahedron...\Y/......outside 3D tetrahedron......

.....outside 2D subdivided triangle....\Y/....outside 2D subdivided triangle....

Some believe space does not exist. They have no comprehension of "U"niverse being both macro-infinite space and finite occupied space. Yet they have no rational, logical common sense to validate their viewpoint.

The truth is out there, for those who seek it, those who don't and those who scoff at it. imho

r6
Rr6 wrote: Metaphysical-1 and phyiscal/energy are in eternal complementation to each other.
O complements 1.
Man complements woman, optimally at 90 degrees.
Convex > (< concave are eternally coexist.
Inside finite occupied space Universe, and outside finite occupied space Uni-Verse.
And then there is that little bit of occupied space Universe, that separates inside from outside, Fuller would say. I call that the buffer-zone of gravity and and to whatever degree, dark energy.

r6
"U"niverse > UniVerse > universe > I-verse < you-verse < we-verse < them-verse
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Citizensearth
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Citizensearth »

I agree with what others have said regarding maths being the map rather than the territory. It's basically just concepts with the totality of content abstracted out of it, and thus I suspect it is a product of the human abstraction process rather than the universe.

I think this also has implications for the beginning of the universe. Conceptually, things have a beginning and an end, but I sometimes wonder if literally there is such a thing. Almost every thing seems to exist as a changed state of previous thing(s). A table didn't begin, it was a collection of wood that used to be a tree. That wood changed shape, and at some point we decided it was better to call it a table rather than a tree/wood/whatever. So, what if there is no actual literal starts or ends? Then when we wonder if the universe had a beginning, the big bang looks like an attempt to write our habitually useful conceptual framework onto an existence that doesn't know anything about starts and ends. I don't feel entirely certain of this, but I find it worth thinking about.

Ignore what others have said criticizing you personally as a STEM background, simply seek the truth and try to be aware we all have skewed access to information and ideas based on our professional or academic backgrounds. Keep thinking, writing and having fun!
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Rr6
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Rr6 »

What is curved space-time? What is a vector? In the following I think of a great circle actually be a torus i.e. a toroidal vector.

Pi * r^2, times 2 * PiR
...http://www.engineersedge.com/volume_calc/torus.htm...
....https://www.google.com/search?q=volume+ ... 33&bih=528....

.....Pi^3 = 31.00 62 7 80
Pi^4 / 4 = 24.35 22 7 27

5-fold icosa{20}hedron has 31 primary great circles
4-fold cubo{6}-octa{8}hedron has 24 chords
...aka Vector Equilibrium/jitterbug and transforms into topology of a sine-wave ^v^v.......

The VE is defined by 4 hexagonal bisections. OO OO { a meson i.e two quarks/quark and anti-quark }
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergeti ... f5511.html

A sum total of finite's is a finite. I see our finite, occupied space Uni-Verse, as being a variable, yet finite set of ultra-micro tori, that, I have laid out clearly, with each being defined by gravity, sine-wave and dark energy as,

Space( )-Time^v-Space )( vectors.

( ^v )( v^ ) i.e. positive curvature, sine-wave, negative curvature geodesic trajectories.

Here is my long time favorite graphic, that, approximates how I view our Universe to have an undulating surface.
http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.a ... CHILD.html

Fuller referred to the VE/jitterbug as the Operating System of Universe. Partially because it passes through a;
quasi-icosa{20}heron configuration,

then a octa{8}hedron configuration, and finally,

a tetra{4}hedron configuration ergo the three and only three, primary, structurally stable, symmetrical/regular polyhedra of Universe.

Space{ 31 }
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergeti ... 5730b.html

Time{ 24 }
See VE sine-wave configuration..also close to quadra-pedic configurations

Mind/Intellect{ 12 }
....metaphysical-1.....

Biological{ 8 }
http://www.chem1.com/acad/sci/aboutwater.html

Spin{ 6 }
http://howthingsfly.si.edu/flight-dynam ... ch-and-yaw
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergeti ... f2006.html

IS{ 2 }
..inside-outside...concave-)-convex...
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergeti ... f2006.html
r6
"U"niverse > UniVerse > universe > I-verse < you-verse < we-verse < them-verse
Wirius
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Re: Isn't the Universe simply mathematical?

Post by Wirius »

To add and concur with others here, math works because we designed it to do so. Its an abstraction of identity which follows the logic of identities interactions. "One" is an identity. "Two" is the identity of two singular identities together. After the base establishment, we use deduction to establish new rules. Don't forget, math has been established over thousands of years. Its definitely not beyond human invention.
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