Friday, May 31, 2019

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Back in 1960, Eugene Wigner published a famous essay by that title. Christian apologists of a certain bent (e.g. Alvin Plantinga) appeal to this phenomenon as an argument for God's existence. For mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, the mathematical structure of the physical universe is a concrete exemplification of an abstract domain that exists outside the universe. Although Penrose is agnostic, you can see the theistic potential in that admission. Here's a recent book that provides more supporting material for that line of argument.

And here's the interview with Witten.

It's ironic that this is coming from physicists who are atheistic or agnostic. In that regard it parallels the hard problem of consciousness by secular philosophers of mind whose default position is physicalism, but acknowledge that physicalism is inadequate to account for the nature of consciousness.

No comments:

Post a Comment