M.P.: Mathematics offer a truer expression of the universe than has ever been found, and the computer you are typing on is as good proof as any that it works.
Me: Mathematics expresses a framework. It is a tool, and is used as such, but it is a framework and does not dictate anything and everything. It can't explain everything, and it only expresses one aspect of life in the universe.
C.K.: Indeed, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
M.P.: Math doesn't dictate the universe, the universe dictates mathematics. Math is the language of the universe and everything inside the universe so far as we can tell, can be expressed mathematically.The reason why spiritual things can't be expressed mathematically is that it is a construct of human imagination and fear. Nothing more, nothing less.
C.K.: Language & music are also constructs, or realizations, of human imagination, & music can be expressed & uunderstood mathematically, although we don't usually do that while we are being moved by it. Mathematics is a very useful, & beautiful, tool, a facet of understanding. As with all tools, however sophisticated, it does however have its limits.
M.P.: I would hesitate to equate language and music with spirituality. Sure, they are both our constructs, but they are also concrete things that are tangible and relatable to physical world as well as having a deep seated emotional place in our minds. I would sooner equate spirituality with love. Love seems like such a mystical, unknowable special thing, yet when you think about it, love is just the tool that evolution used to pair bond us when we hit the tipping point in our past where monogamy became evolutionarily favourable over polygamy.
The same goes for spirituality. Our brains are incredibly powerful, yet very fallible machines. If you've ever read a book about optical illusions you may know what I'm talking about. Pages seemingly becoming 3D is not a trick of light, but our brains failing to recognize what it's looking at. compound this with lack of knowledge about what one is looking at and the human tendancy to make arguments from ignorance (eg: "I see a weird object in the sky. I don't know what it is. Therefore, it must be aliens."). Put all these together and you have an explanation for all sorts of weird spiritual practices prevalent in humanity without having to resort to metaphysics.
Me: The dry evolutionary worldview, once again, is an effective tool for the sake of explanation and reasoning. Evolution itself was and is much more of a complicated and beautiful process than all the books in the world could explain, and science is a way of explaining and connecting things. It has nowhere near found certainty, and nothing in existence can be boiled down to a theory of knowledge that can define existence itself. It can only give us an outline. Knowledge has limits, and existence, to me, is objective AND subjective, not one or the other. Although the original reasons for why we do certain things can be traced back in evolution, the reasons for why we do them now are completely new ones, and steeped in the greater evolution and progression of our intelligences and beauty, as well as creativity. Our reasons now are no longer primitive, but spiritual with our understanding as to why we do them, and with the realization that we have a large amount of choice in the matter.
I'm not talking about religious spirituality, nor am I implying there are things like a heaven and hell we must abide to. Spirituality is the act of living every moment to it's fullest and being happy about it, as opposed to standing back and observing everything, which also has it's time and place, and can be carried out spiritually as well. Passivity versus passion.
Another thing to recognize and obtain is wisdom. As a human being, I recognize that in all honesty, I cannot know everything, and may very well know nothing. "Doubt is not a comfortable feeling, but certainty is absurd."
M.P.: Our universe is ordered, and we know that it's laws have been at least relatively consistent since the big bang by charting the movements of celestial bodies. If the universe is ordered, then we can use its own laws and mechanisms to describe how it is ordered. This is the basis of mathematics. Mathematics only work because of the way the universe works. Math is a language dictated by the universe.
Me: Math is a language that speaks, once again, a framework. It doesn't know all the words.Think about it. Yes, math can calculate the movement of celestial bodies, but recently scientists and mathematicians realized a majority of there mathematics formulas- which told them that most of the celestial bodies they were observing should, logically, eventually move out of orbit, realized there was something large missing, as these planets did NOT move out of their orbits as predicted. In order to reconcile these formulas with observation and make them even have a semblance of sense, they had to add a variable to the mix- the 'fudge factor' known as Dark Matter, or Dark Energy, or whatever you want to call it. No one has any idea what Dark Matter is, could, would, or should be; it's simply been arbitrarily added to the equations because it's the only way to make said formulas and equations make sense in light of observation which has countered all scientific logic. Turns out.. whatever Dark Matter or Dark Energy is, it makes up 90% of the cosmos.That's a lot to sweep under the rug, and then decide the Universe is inherently ordered and now makes sense. All science and mathematics do are recognize patterns on our level of perspective. I mean.. also consider quantum mechanics and chaos theory. Both are, in essence, paradoxes in the scientific and mathematic worlds. The only patterns that have been noted are patterns of consistently breaking patterns and being unpredictable, or predictable only to a certain degree. The Universe is not inherently anything, as far as anyone can see, and anyone, whether they are religious or scientific, are fooling themselves if they decide otherwise.
Despite ambitions and, perhaps, illusions to the contrary, the message that science brings is that what we know is so vastly outstripped by what we don't know.
M.P.: The fact that we don't know what dark matter or energy is does not mean that the universe is unordered. It just means that there is a phenomena out there that we don't know about yet. What you say about quantum mechanics is downright untrue. Quantum physics behaves in a way completely outside the realm of human comprehension, but it can still be modeled mathematically which is why we are able to use it. Nobody can understand the true nature of an electron intuitively, but through the use of rigorous testing and a great deal of mathematics we can describe its properties and behavior even if it doesn't make intuitive sense to the physicist.
As for the uncertainty principal and the way it means that we can't accurately find the momentum and position of a particle at a certain scale, that is not a failing of mathematics or our abilities of perception, it is a reflection of the nature of the particle. It acts as a particle but also as a wave like nothing we are familiar with and so there isn't any actual information at that certain range. The momentum and position of the particle in question is actually a probability distribution as opposed to a newtonian absolute.
I also agree that even with a billion years, we'll never understand everything in the cosmos, but that won't be because it can't be theorized, only that it takes so much data and so much precision to describe sonething like a protein mathematically that it isn't worth our time to do it when there are other ways of getting the information using the principals of physics and chemistry applied in certain ways. That is how specialized sciences like chemistry and biology came into being and why they still exist. But these thugs still can be described physically.
Me: Math attempts to express, just like language does, things that are inherently intangible, but understandable in the abstract sense they are framed in via mathematics. If something is not intuitively understood, it is not really understood or understandable. It can only be expressed as an abstract, which math does incredibly well, but not as accurately or as realistically as intuition could were such things as quantum physics and the entirety of the Universe actually able to be experienced. Sadly, as human beings, all we are able to do is experience from our level of perspective on planet Earth. Beyond all of this, whether we are looking into what makes us and the Earth, or what is in the vastness of the cosmos, we are only curious and deductive spectators. We can and will not ever understand everything.
I mean.. think about it. What's going to give you a better understanding of my house? My description of it to you? Sure, it could be quite accurate and detailed, but you wouldn't really understand until you experienced my house for yourself.. as in, touched it, saw it, and explored it.
We cannot do that on the quantum level, nor can we do that on a cosmological level.
In all of these cases, we only taste the truth. No matter how in-depth or comprehensive we get.
Negative capability is a proper way to humble our scientific, philosophical, and psychological arrogance.
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