Philosophically : no. When you look at the planet Jupiter you don’t say : “Hum, oh: - there’s nothing to understand about this physical object beyond math, because my model of it, which is sufficient for a full understanding of its reality, is mathematic.” Or mabye you do—but then I think our differences might too deep to bridge. If you don’t—why don’t you with Jupiter, but would with an electron or a photon?
mmm, but the deepest intuition about the reasons behind the phenomenological properties of Jupiter (like its retrograde movement in the sky, or its colors) comes from intuition about the extrinsic meaning and intrinsic properties of mathematical models about Jupiter. How else?
Sure, it’s the perspective of observers, not reality in-and-of-itself, but that’s a fundamental limitation of any observer (regardless if they use math or don’t), and the model can be epistemically wrong, but that’s not the point (that’s not exclusively a property of math).
Just to be clear, I’ve always been speaking epistemically not ontologically.
Philosophically : no. When you look at the planet Jupiter you don’t say : “Hum, oh: - there’s nothing to understand about this physical object beyond math, because my model of it, which is sufficient for a full understanding of its reality, is mathematic.” Or mabye you do—but then I think our differences might too deep to bridge. If you don’t—why don’t you with Jupiter, but would with an electron or a photon?
mmm, but the deepest intuition about the reasons behind the phenomenological properties of Jupiter (like its retrograde movement in the sky, or its colors) comes from intuition about the extrinsic meaning and intrinsic properties of mathematical models about Jupiter. How else?
Sure, it’s the perspective of observers, not reality in-and-of-itself, but that’s a fundamental limitation of any observer (regardless if they use math or don’t), and the model can be epistemically wrong, but that’s not the point (that’s not exclusively a property of math).
Just to be clear, I’ve always been speaking epistemically not ontologically.