May 22, 2024
This Essay considers the relation of math to science, the reliance of both on consciousness, and what this means for understanding the true reality within which we live.
Many people think of math as the way we use numbers every day from an early age — adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. At a more advanced level, however, mathematics is a highly sophisticated discipline.
One great mystery — which has perplexed illustrious mathematicians for centuries — is why anyone has an interest in higher math at all. Human beings could get along just fine fulfilling their basic physical needs — finding food, shelter, and sex — without higher math.
Why Did Advanced Mathematics Happen?
Why is it that some people feel a powerful urge to understand and create complex mathematical formulas, sometimes even sacrificing material pleasures and practical opportunities to wrestle with a complex equation. Math can be as compelling for some as music, creating art, or playing a sport.
An equally perplexing mystery is why abstract mathematical formulas can precisely describe the material world. Higher math functions through complex formulas that are ideas, images, understandings that arise solely in consciousness, in the imagination of a gifted individual. These ideas are shared from one mind to another by symbols — markings on a piece of paper or a screen that often do not represent physical things, but ideas in consciousness.
So why do these abstract ideas that arise from a stroke of insight in consciousness, like E=mc2, correspond to the material world? This simple formula came to Einstein in a flash of insight, yet it precisely described a previously hidden dimension of the material world. And there are many, many other examples, some of which have arisen in dreams and in other altered states of consciousness.
These immaterial ideas often do not start from a desire to build a shelter, cook food, or win a mate. Much of early science began as a process for studying the material world — trying to understand it in order to solve practical problems and improve daily life. Simple math was one of its helpers. But higher mathematics usually does not start from trying to solve any practical problem in the material world. It often involves an attempt to resolve a highly sophisticated mathematical question that has little or no practical application. Continue reading “Math, Consciousness, Reality”