All analogies are suspect, but if I had to choose one I’d say physics’ theories—at best—are if anything like code that returns the Fibonacci sequence through a specified range. The theories give us a formula we can use to make certain predictions, in some cases with arbitrary precision. Video, losslessly- or lossy-compressed, is still video. Whereas
fib n = take n fiblist
where fiblist = 0:1:(zipWith (+) fiblist (tail fiblist))
is not a bag holing the entire Fibonacci sequence, waiting for us to compress it so we can look at a slightly more pixelated version of the actual piece.
Also, I don’t think it makes sense to say math is part of nature (except in the sense everything is part of nature), though it may be that math is a psychological analogy to some feature of nature—like vision is an analogy to part of the EM spectrum. It would be a strange coincidence otherwise, considering how useful math is helping us make certain predictions. At the same time, many features of nature are utterly unpredictable, so either math only images select parts—we can’t see x-ray—or we haven’t fully understood how to use mathematics yet.
Incidentally, I think it is true that math—all our secular, materialist pretense aside—is still widely felt to have magical properties. In this regard Descartes’ god is still with us.
All analogies are suspect, but if I had to choose one I’d say physics’ theories—at best—are if anything like code that returns the Fibonacci sequence through a specified range. The theories give us a formula we can use to make certain predictions, in some cases with arbitrary precision. Video, losslessly- or lossy-compressed, is still video. Whereas
fib n = take n fiblist where fiblist = 0:1:(zipWith (+) fiblist (tail fiblist))
is not a bag holing the entire Fibonacci sequence, waiting for us to compress it so we can look at a slightly more pixelated version of the actual piece.
Also, I don’t think it makes sense to say math is part of nature (except in the sense everything is part of nature), though it may be that math is a psychological analogy to some feature of nature—like vision is an analogy to part of the EM spectrum. It would be a strange coincidence otherwise, considering how useful math is helping us make certain predictions. At the same time, many features of nature are utterly unpredictable, so either math only images select parts—we can’t see x-ray—or we haven’t fully understood how to use mathematics yet.
Incidentally, I think it is true that math—all our secular, materialist pretense aside—is still widely felt to have magical properties. In this regard Descartes’ god is still with us.