> Strictly speaking, math has to yield to the laws of nature as it does not exist outside the laws of nature (as mathematics is in our minds) There are (within

> Strictly speaking, math has to yield to the laws of nature as it does not exist outside the laws of nature (as mathematics is in our minds) There are (within academia) alternative views to this one, e.g. Max Tegmark's "Mathematical Universe hypothesis": - http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9704009 http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9704009 - http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646 http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0646 - wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothesi... The basic idea being, all internally consistent (viz., mathematical) structures exist (whatever the notion pertains to), and those containing 'self-aware substructures' are perceived as physical realities by virtue of those SASes being embedded within a particular given consistent structure (and hence having a from-within vantage point). Sounds fishy, but it's a hypothesis alright, and there have been (AFAIK) some attempts to provide falsifiability conditions (thus making it a testable scientific hypothesis), but one would first have to address the problem of proper operationalization, i.e. defining the damn concepts at hand; it's probably too all-over-the-place for now - but nevertheless interesting and (heh) internally consistent. Also see (for those interested), e.g. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computation-physicalsystems/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computation-physicalsystem... (nice overview of related problem spaces)