#MathematicalWorldModels or #PhysicalWorldViews – is that the Question?

I get the impression that numbers are perceived to be ‘technical’ – presumably because of their usefulness for calculations. That’s what women tend not to like.

Men, however, are desperately trying to build world views from physics, for that’s been the dominant science for describing largest cosmic phenomena and smallest nuclear events.

That’s why I loved reading Margaret Wertheim’s book Pythagoras’ Trousers about God, Physics and the Gender Wars.

At Pythagoras‘ times [580-500 BC], geometry and astronomy were the reigning sciences. In his search for knowledge, he travelled to the Orient and came back wearing trousers in contrast to Greek costumes.

Pythagoras taught ‘Everything is Number’ in his spiritual community where silence and fasting were the rule. Is true knowledge not possible without self-knowledge?

When I came to CERN in Geneva, I thought those physicists understood God, for they understand the smallest and the largest. I was 22 then and have learned since that astrophysicists can NOT talk to nuclear physicists! For physical phenomena are defined such that they are NOT scalable.

Only geometric structures are scalable. Their dimensionality is clear and ‘in your face’. Algebra ‘waters’ dimensionality down. Wipes it away by using letters to generalise. Not just dimensionality.

Algebraic equations are used to describe physical phenomena like energy and matter and physical measures like the speed of light. After all, that’s what Einstein’s e = mc² does.

A friend showed my site to her son who thought that The Thunderbolts Project might be interested: they are advocating The Electric Universe as a ‘common denominator’ between large and small – on a physical level.

What I am demonstrating with my ‘number magic’ are principles that are fundamental to both mathematics and physics:

1. the unique characteristic of numbers is that they are
   • stand-alone symbols
     • of great spiritual and musical significance
   • counters
     • of concrete objects
     • of abstract variables
   • ‘players’ in arithmetical calculations
     • results of arithmetical calculations
   • counts
     • of units of time
     • of units of ‘dimensional spaces’: lines, areas and volumes
     • of units of biological, chemical or physical measurements
     • of positions in sequences also known as ranking
2. the fact that #PrimeNumbers have been an eternal challenge for humanity is due to the human invention of arithmetical operations:
   • additions create sums and multiplications create products
   • in my humble opinion God does not multiply: Nature just adds or takes away and it moves
   • movement is happening no matter whether we count units of time or not
   • shapes of movement are thus for physics what shapes as containers are for my patterns of numbers: contexts for human interpretation.

Since writing these pages, I have discovered that symmetry is the overarching concept that bridges theories with realities.