Mathematics is the primary tool many of today’s science use to define the causality of the physical laws governing of our observable universe.
However it is by definition is an abstract creation of the mind and therefore is not physically connected to the observable real world, most of us believe we live in.
Therefore, we can never be sure the equations developed by science accurately define the physicality of those laws or the real world they are describing.
This is true even though they make accurate predictions because unless there is a way of physically connecting the mathematical worlds create by the intellect to the observable world we live in science cannot be sure that is has chosen the correct set of facts that defines its existence.
Granted the mind can systematical quantify the natural world as the mathematics of quantum mechanics does with great accuracy but that does not necessarily mean it tell us anything about the reality of how or why that quantification takes place.
For example there are an infinite number of ways one can mathematically describe the fact that there are two apples on a table. One can predict why based on the assumption that there were originally four apples and two were taken away or assume that originally there were six and four were taken away. However if there were only four apples to begin with the mathematical description using six apples even though accurately quantifies the existence of two apples it does not describe their world because in “reality’ that world did not contain six apples.
Similarly just because the mathematics of quantum mechanics can very accurately predict the quantitative observation of the particle world does not mean that it defines why it is that way.
Einstein was often quoted as saying “If a new theory was not based on a physical image simple enough for a child to understand, it was probably worthless.”
He realized for science to make a claim that they have organized the natural world into a single set of patterns or laws that describe why we perceive its “reality” the way we do they must be able to conceptually connect the independent models developed by our minds to the reality of natural world that exists outside of it.
For example Newton in a letter to Bentley in 1693, talks about a conceptual problem he has with his gravity theory by rejecting the action at a distance that it requires.
“It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact…That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.”
However Einstein realized by extrapolating the physical image of how objects move on a curve surface in a three-dimensional environment to a four dimensional space-time manifold one could explain how gravity “may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum” in terms of a curvature in space and time. This enables one to understand gravity based on a physical image formed by the “reality” of what we can see and touch in our three-dimension world.
In other words he was able to connect the observable reality of our three dimensional world to the mathematical one he had created in his mind to explain gravity in terms of a physical imaged form in our three dimensional world.
Unfortunately many of today scientists seem to be ignoring the lessons taught to us by Einstein. They chose to look for reality only in terms of abstract mathematics instead of the physical imagery given to us by the “reality” of what we can see and touch.
The reason may be because it is easier to alter an abstract environment based on mathematics to conform to an observational inconsistency than it is to alter one based on physical imagery.
For example Quantum theory makes predictions based on the random properties of a probability function. However because the abstract properties of probabilities which are not physically connected to our world, all its predictions no matter how inconsistent they are with the world they are describing can be incorporate into it.
This is in sharp contrast to the space-time environment defined by Einstein in that projecting the physical image of objects moving on a curve surface in our three-dimensional environment physically connects it to a four-dimensional space time-environment
For example a single instance of a mass being gravitational repelled instead of attracted would contradict the physical imagery define by Einstein and would be extremely if not impossible to explain because no one has ever observe objects rolling up hill in our three-dimensional environment. In other words because he defined gravity in terms of a physical image based on how objects move on a curve surface in a three-dimensional environment it makes observations like two masses gravitational repelling each other virtually impossible to incorporate into it.
However because quantum mechanics is based on probabilities anything that can happen eventually will. Therefore it is virtually impossible to find any observation in the real world that contradicts it. However this can only happen in an abstract environment which is not bound by the physicality of our observational world.
As mentioned earlier unless science can conceptually connect the mathematical worlds created by the intellect to the observable world we live in we cannot say that we know or understand anything physical laws that we assume define its reality.
But why should science put in the effort to understanding our theoretical models in terms of the physical “reality” of our world when both the abstract mathematical foundation of quantum mechanics and the physical imagery of Einstein’s theories make very accurate predictions of future events.
Because the mission of a science is to define the real world in terms of what we perceive in our environment not to perceive an abstract mathematical environment to define what we want it to be.
Later Jeff
Copyright 2014 Jeffrey O’Callaghan