Tuesday, July 15, 2008

There is only mathematics

There is only mathematics; that is all that exists.

That is a quote from cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Discover magazine published an interview with Dr. Tegmark in their July issue. Within the first three questions the interview mentioned both the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Surely, You're Joking Mr. Feynman! Dr. Tegmark is an interesting guy!

What is reality? For Dr. Tegmark, it is mathematics, which is not unlike saying it is a computer simulation (follow the link for the ideas of Nick Bostrom).

UPDATE: The idea that there is only mathematics is not new. It goes back to Pythagoras, he of the Pythagorean Theorem. No writings of Pythagoras survive, but Aristotle wrote: "The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things." (source)

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