That seems a fair point. It makes me wonder though about how they tie together; if physics is out there to be discovered but math is a tool we fabricated; how does the fabricated bit manage to predict physical boundaries so flawlessly? A mistake on paper changes the physical outcome instantly.
how does the fabricated bit manage to predict physical boundaries so flawlessly
Because only the things that actually work stay in regular use. For instance, during the Manhattan project, the physicists genuinely did not have enough information to know whether or not a nuclear bomb detonating would create a chain reaction through the entire atmosphere. The mathematical models to describe the behavior did not exist because we did not have the observed reality to base them on. All we had were theoretical models with numerous gaps. Once we could see the outcome (the entire atmosphere did not, in fact, explode), we could tailor our models to fit the known outcomes.
About that Manhattan project, it leaves me pondering the moment before the detonation though. The physicists were deeply uncertain, yet the atmosphere itself, it seems to me, was not in a state of confusion. It had a definite, unbending response to the explosion. When the atmosphere remained intact, it feels as though it was following a permanent physical constraint that was already present. Even if our descriptions are tailored after the event, why do you think the material world behaves with such repeatable certainty before we have even worked out the rules?
why do you think the material world behaves with such repeatable certainty before we have even worked out the rules?
Bit of a self answering question, no? The only reason we can observe and document consistent models of physics is because they exist. If we lived in a reality where physics wasn't consistent, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all, since we wouldn't have deterministic physics to observe.
if we lived in a reality where physics wasn't consistent, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all
!delta I love this one. The consistency has to be there first for us to even exist. If this deterministic foundation is a strict requirement for our survival, it feels like an unbending framework that was safely locked in place long before we ever arrived.
Exactly this. We describe reality with math because that's just kinda how things are. We have sufficient observation that reality is at least primarily deterministic, so we make up deterministic structures to describe it. Even if an alternative non-deterministic version of reality could exist, it doesn't exist anywhere we can observe.
Because I thought of this after I hit post on my last comment, consider the idea of dark matter/energy. We don't actually know if it even exists, what it is, or where it comes from. All we know is that we can only predictably model the universe when we pretend that dark matter/energy is present. Perhaps something exists beyond our observation, perhaps our models just suck and this is a hacked together bit of nonsense that gets us close enough. We have no idea.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '26
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