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If you look at current mathematical and experimental physics, I do not see where people ignore the objects! (and what is a non mathematical object anyway) Phy

If you look at current mathematical and experimental physics, I do not see where people ignore the objects! (and what is a non mathematical object anyway) Physics and mathematics have evolved a lot and current research questions cannot anymore be discovered through simple experiments, one of the reasons is because an experiment would be too costly. But not always, some things are intrinsically difficult to observe or even impossible. In comparison mathematics is a 'cheap' and extremely powerful tool. When a theory is developed enough, we can start to design again experiments to test it. This is simply an example of the scientific method which is applied. In practice, even if a theory is purely mathematical (which is never the case as usually those maths are developed by trained physicists in classical theories) its power is assessed by how much of our reality we can infer with it. People mix frequently how the science make discoveries with what is true, in the case of Wolfram's theory, if it is enough to prove and infer interesting things, it is already worth studying it. If not for the sake of physics, at least for the sake of mathematics :)

tsimionescu 6y ago
As far as I understand it (and im not in any way claiming to be a physicist) both string theory and Wolfram's theories are tryong to deeive the constants of the Standard Model as properties of mathematical objects, not 'contingent' proeprties of the universe. That is, the Standard Model interpretation is 'the universe just happens to have these particles with these properties and these interactions', while the hope behind String Theory is that we'll be able to say 'the universe consists of this single thing that obeys this mathematical law, and so because of such and such mathematical properties it can look like either an electron or a quark or a tau particle, and when its in the electron state it must have this mass, and when it's in the graviton state it will have that mass/spin/color and no other is possible'. I used the term 'non-mathematical object' for any part of the theory whose properties can't be derived and must fundamentally come from experiment, such as the mass of the fundamental particles in the Standard Model.

tsimionescu 6y ago

As far as I understand it (and im not in any way claiming to be a physicist) both string theory and Wolfram's theories are tryong to deeive the constants of the Standard Model as properties of mathematical objects, not 'contingent' proeprties of the universe. That is, the Standard Model interpretation is 'the universe just happens to have these particles with these properties and these interactions', while the hope behind String Theory is that we'll be able to say 'the universe consists of this single thing that obeys this mathematical law, and so because of such and such mathematical properties it can look like either an electron or a quark or a tau particle, and when its in the electron state it must have this mass, and when it's in the graviton state it will have that mass/spin/color and no other is possible'. I used the term 'non-mathematical object' for any part of the theory whose properties can't be derived and must fundamentally come from experiment, such as the mass of the fundamental particles in the Standard Model.