Reality: God is a mathematician (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 16, 2023, 17:26 (255 days ago) @ David Turell

A new essay:

https://www.sciencealert.com/mathematics-has-a-biological-origin-study-reveals?utm_sour...

"By stepping outside the box of our usual way of thinking about numbers, my colleagues and I have recently shown that arithmetic has biological roots and is a natural consequence of how perception of the world around us is organised.

"Our results explain why arithmetic is true and suggest that mathematics is a realisation in symbols of the fundamental nature and creativity of the mind.

"Thus, the miraculous correspondence between mathematics and physical reality that has been a source of wonder from the ancient Greeks to the present – as explored in astrophysicist Mario Livio's book Is God a mathematician? – suggests the mind and world are part of a common unity.

"Humans have been making symbols for numbers for more than 5,500 years. More than 100 distinct notation systems are known to have been used by different civilisations, including Babylonian, Egyptian, Etruscan, Mayan and Khmer.

***

"We proposed a new approach based on the assumption that arithmetic has a biological origin.

Many non-human species, including insects, show an ability for spatial navigation which seems to require the equivalent of algebraic computation. For example, bees can take a meandering journey to find nectar but then return by the most direct route, as if they can calculate the direction and distance home.

"How their miniature brain (about 960,000 neurons) achieves this is unknown. These calculations might be the non-symbolic precursors of addition and multiplication, honed by natural selection as the optimal solution for navigation.

"Arithmetic may be based on biology and special in some way because of evolution's fine-tuning.

***

"In our research, we proved that four assumptions – monotonicity, convexity, continuity and isomorphism – were sufficient to uniquely identify arithmetic (addition and multiplication over the real numbers) from the universe of possibilities.

"Monotonicity is the intuition of "order preserving" and helps us keep track of our place in the world, so that when we approach an object it looms larger but smaller when we move away.
Convexity is grounded in intuitions of "betweenness". For example, the four corners of a football pitch define the playing field even without boundary lines connecting them.
Continuity describes the smoothness with which objects seem to move in space and time.
Isomorphism is the idea of sameness or analogy. It's what allows us to recognise that a cat is more similar to a dog than to a rock.

"Thus, arithmetic is special because it is a consequence of these purely qualitative conditions.

***

"...our results show that arithmetic is biologically-based and a natural consequence of how our perception is structured.

"Although this structure is shared with other animals, only humans have invented mathematics. It is humanity's most intimate creation, a realisation in symbols of the fundamental nature and creativity of the mind.

"In this sense, mathematics is both invented (uniquely human) and discovered (biologically-based). The seemingly miraculous success of mathematics in the physical sciences hints that our mind and the world are not separate, but part of a common unity.

"The arc of mathematics and science points toward non-dualism, a philosophical concept that describes how the mind and the universe as a whole are connected, and that any sense of separation is an illusion. This is consistent with many spiritual traditions (Taoism, Buddhism) and Indigenous knowledge systems such as mātauranga Māori." (my bold)

Comment: The bolded conclusion tells me God is a mathematician. In my view there is a real Cartesian dualism between mind and consciousness as demonstrated by NDE's, in which the near-to-death person experiences a reality, while unconscious, in which he learns facts that are corroborated.