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> as time goes on it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen There

> as time goes on it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen There is a fair bit of mysticism that gets bandied about along these lines--and I can certainly see why a mathematical platonist might marvel at the spooky correspondence between beautiful mathematics and to-be-discovered physical theories. But if you can let go of the platonism, then I think a rather straightforward explanation emerges: A mathematician is one who explores and names the various ways that a human mind can stretch and fold. I guess it's kind of like yoga. The ways of folding that best reflect whatever it is that makes the human mind, well, human--those ones we call beautiful. Nature is the only thing not of human construction that we fold our minds to fit (you might call this process 'perception')--but we are still only able to fold in human-like ways. So the mathematician catalogs the ways we can see, and the physicist catalogs the things we do see. It doesn't strike me as especially spooky that the physicist finds things that correspond nicely to the mathematician's list.

air7 7y ago
The spooky thing is that the physicist that "finds things that correspond nicely to the mathematician's list" is so freaking good at predicting nature and yielding it to his will. People always looked at nature through the lens of their minds and came up with creative explanations for reality (like the gods/4 elements/mysticism etc) the difference is that they were much worse at any actual real-world predictions/control compared to modern day physicists. So we much be on to something here.
auntienomen 7y ago
Except that sometimes the resonances are extremely peculiar. It's not terribly surprising that differential geometry was the right language for describing physics on spacetime. It's a bit more surprising (to me anyways) that the same probability distribution describes both the energy levels of complicated nuclei and the distribution of zeros on the critical line of the Riemann zeta function.

air7 7y ago

The spooky thing is that the physicist that "finds things that correspond nicely to the mathematician's list" is so freaking good at predicting nature and yielding it to his will. People always looked at nature through the lens of their minds and came up with creative explanations for reality (like the gods/4 elements/mysticism etc) the difference is that they were much worse at any actual real-world predictions/control compared to modern day physicists. So we much be on to something here.

auntienomen 7y ago

Except that sometimes the resonances are extremely peculiar. It's not terribly surprising that differential geometry was the right language for describing physics on spacetime. It's a bit more surprising (to me anyways) that the same probability distribution describes both the energy levels of complicated nuclei and the distribution of zeros on the critical line of the Riemann zeta function.