The World's Really Not Made of Math

An Outdoor Masonic Lodge

The image at the right shows an outdoor masonic lodge. The two pillars (probably) represent the summer and winter solstices, and the alternating colors of the pavement establish a means of measuring the shadow cast by the sun, either as a sundial or a calendar (I'm not really sure about the context in this photo). I believe quite a bit of the masonic imagery is about the world of reason that's implicit in the natural world, that is, the world can be measured and understood. Indeed, in an earlier post, I pointed out that the stars taught men math.

An idea like the Grand Unified Theory is the ultimate expression of this idea, really that the mathematics which describes the world is, in a very real sense, the world. That is, the formal language of mathematics which expresses the laws of nature is nature, or maybe nature's operating system. If there were a Grand Unified Theory, one could conceivably build another universe within a computer.

What if the world's not made of math, though? This idea is really the gist of this blog--that where physics ends, poetry, analogy, and subjectivity takes over. Is this merely a limitation of the human mind, or is it a feature of the universe?