The World is Made of Math!

No matter where we look, even if we look within, we see a natural world that is a web of stunning, repeating patterns (fractals). Patterns that can only be described with mathematics. It is mathematics that explains the beauty of our natural world, that explains how this beauty comes emerges.

For many of us, Math, was that subject we hated, although for some us it became a tool to assist in understanding patterns. Nevertheless, for almost of us, we thought of mathematics being something that we humans created, a language to understand the nature world in a precise way.

Perhaps we were wrong!

What if mathematics is in reality what the world is made of? Not created from, but made of. What if mathematics underpins the fundamental laws of nature?

“If mathematics explains so many things we see around us, then it is unlikely that mathematics is something we created,” claims Sam Baron, Associate Professor of Philosophy, the University of Melbourne. According to this line of reasoning, mathematics existed before we humans “invented” it. It is more proper then, to say that we humans discovered – and are discovering – the laws of mathematics.

Assuming that this is true, as theists how does this idea change our understanding of “God”?

I would suggest that in some mystical way, mathematics is part and parcel of the incarnation. Not the incarnation of Jesus, per se, but the Incarnation of the Logos with the universe. Logos = Word = Breath. If I am correct, then mathematics and the Divine Breath are one.

To make such a claim opens up an entirely different way of thinking – and speaking – about the nature of Divinity.

Early Celtic Christianity spoke of the entirety of nature being charged (endowed) with the image of God. Could mathematics be that (or part of that) endowment? Not merely the ability to think mathematically, but inherent to the very nature of nature. That which is seen fractals?

Ref: "The Universe is Math," Live Science.

Frank A. Mills
July 3, 2024