Jan 10, 2026 04:24 PM
Is the Universe Made of Math? Part 1: The Unreasonable Tool
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/i...nable-tool
EXCERPTS: Math described things that were FIXED, like geometry, arithmetic, musical harmonies and scales, and of course the appearance of the stars and planets. These were all fundamental patterns of the universe that simply WERE, and we could use numbers and formulas and relations (like the Pythagorean theorem for triangles) to uncover those hidden patterns.
Physics, on the other hand, was all about CHANGE. It was about the process of evolution and manifestation and movement. Math did not belong here. After all, there’s no fundamental pattern to a baby growing to become an adult, or a dolphin swimming in the ocean, or fire burning through a log.
And then Galileo happened. Now Galileo did a lot of things, but one of his biggest contributions to physics was the application of math (which, by the way, offended the physicists at the time that there was this lowly mathematician poking his nose in places where it didn’t belong, but that’s a story for another day).He used and applied mathematics to understand what he saw in nature.
[...] And from there the game of modern physics really took off. ... And it all comes to a head a century after Galileo with Isaac Newton himself. ... Newton was SO determined to apply math to his exploration of the universe that he invented a WHOLE NEW MATH, the calculus, to be able to capture change and evolution in physical systems.
With the calculus the whole universe opened up. Everywhere we looked, we found patterns. [...] Physics is a mathematical exploration of the universe. We look for patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships. We use math to capture and describe those patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships...
[...] Galileo found the key. And for four centuries we’ve been opening door after door after door, in the process completely rewriting our understanding of the physical universe. Our perspectives, our views, of how the universe works are RADICALLY different than they were prior to Galileo, and prior to the application of math.
The universe is chaotic and messy and almost incomprehensible. But there ARE patterns, there ARE relationships, there ARE repeatable, predictable behaviors that we can identify, from the orbits of the planets to the Higgs boson. Mathematics is perfectly suited to describe all that. A little TOO perfectly suited... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/i...nable-tool
EXCERPTS: Math described things that were FIXED, like geometry, arithmetic, musical harmonies and scales, and of course the appearance of the stars and planets. These were all fundamental patterns of the universe that simply WERE, and we could use numbers and formulas and relations (like the Pythagorean theorem for triangles) to uncover those hidden patterns.
Physics, on the other hand, was all about CHANGE. It was about the process of evolution and manifestation and movement. Math did not belong here. After all, there’s no fundamental pattern to a baby growing to become an adult, or a dolphin swimming in the ocean, or fire burning through a log.
And then Galileo happened. Now Galileo did a lot of things, but one of his biggest contributions to physics was the application of math (which, by the way, offended the physicists at the time that there was this lowly mathematician poking his nose in places where it didn’t belong, but that’s a story for another day).He used and applied mathematics to understand what he saw in nature.
[...] And from there the game of modern physics really took off. ... And it all comes to a head a century after Galileo with Isaac Newton himself. ... Newton was SO determined to apply math to his exploration of the universe that he invented a WHOLE NEW MATH, the calculus, to be able to capture change and evolution in physical systems.
With the calculus the whole universe opened up. Everywhere we looked, we found patterns. [...] Physics is a mathematical exploration of the universe. We look for patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships. We use math to capture and describe those patterns, structures, symmetries, and relationships...
[...] Galileo found the key. And for four centuries we’ve been opening door after door after door, in the process completely rewriting our understanding of the physical universe. Our perspectives, our views, of how the universe works are RADICALLY different than they were prior to Galileo, and prior to the application of math.
The universe is chaotic and messy and almost incomprehensible. But there ARE patterns, there ARE relationships, there ARE repeatable, predictable behaviors that we can identify, from the orbits of the planets to the Higgs boson. Mathematics is perfectly suited to describe all that. A little TOO perfectly suited... (MORE - missing details)