More on Numbers and Mystics

I just browsed the bookshelves in my office here, and for everyone interested to pursue the Math and Reality topic a bit further I think Rudy Rucker's "Mind Tools - The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality" is an extremely valuable albeit not all too easy starting point. I hope it is still available. It was also translated to several foreign languages, including my own (German), where the title lived through a magical transformation into "Ozean der Wahrheit - oder die Fünf Arten zu Denken", which is "The Ocean of truth, or the five ways of thinking". Rucker explains that Math indeed is the language which we can use to describe the universe. He also clarifies that math is pretty much the opposite of religion since math relies on proof and not on faith. Of course it would be foolish to claim that there is no relationship between mathematics and nature. Even the weakest argument would have to acknowledge that our brain invented mathematics, and our brain duly is a part of nature. As an Astronomer I also know that it is quite astonishing just how far the predictive power of mathematics (or rather mathematical physics) occasionally reaches. But not always. Also it often turned out that our precise calculations do not describe nature accurately but only nearly so. In most cases mathematical Physics is only 100% precise for simplified thought or laboratory experiments. Some recent results from high energy physics also called into question the very concept of natural constants. It may turn out that what was deemed to be constants actually changes of time every so slightly Yet the numbers are there. Proportions are there. Certain mathematical constants are there (such is Pi or e). But we cannot say what they mean. We cannot draw any religious or spiritual conclusion from it. We can just say that they are there. But: They REALLY exist. But it also all is rather complicated. Maybe a quote from Rudy Rucker (re-translated from German again): "Only a landlubber can denie the existence of whales - only a philosopher can denie the existence of numbers..."