LizR wrote:
On 15 June 2015 at 10:41, Russell Standish <li...@hpcoders.com.au
<mailto:li...@hpcoders.com.au>> wrote:
To summarise, there appears to be two quite distinct questions here:
a) Given there are regularities in Nature, why is our mathematics so
effective. As Brent says, this is not surprising - evolution would see
to it that we would choose a mathematical system out of the many
possible that would be effective.
That isn't surprising, of course - but I assume Brent wasn't being quite
/that/ disingenuous. What is surprising (if anything at all is) is that
our world is amenable to description by maths.
That isn't particularly surprising either. The anthropic answer is that
if there weren't such regularities, we wouldn't be here to ask questions
about them.
This answer has force if you assume some form of plenum -- everything
that can exist does exist in some universe. It also follows from some
more recent speculative cosmological and string landscape ideas. But
these ideas really do not require that mathematics, per se, be at the
basis of anything.
Whether an anthropic answer will satisfy everyone is, however, another
question....
Bruce
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