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The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics for Everything
A review of a classic math and physics paper, with reflections on life, the universe and everything. But mainly life.
In this essay, we review seminal work on how come mathematics works so well in the natural sciences, extending the idea to look at how our own lives are shaped by complex factors with which we may be unfamiliar. Making the case that becoming more familiar with basic concepts originating in nonlinear science helps us get more of what we desire and require, we review those concepts and discuss how they might apply in our day-to-day lives. Follow-up readings are linked at the end, along with references.
Eugene Wigner’s landmark paper The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences not only has a great title, but also takes a deep dive exploring why it might be that math works SO well in physics. It’s kind of weird if you stop to think about it — why does math work so well? How do we come up with math, out of… what? Nothing? Just our thoughts? Copying the world? Is it the brain looking into itself — it looks into itself — the deepest insight into the universe being within?
What even is math? How does it connect with our planning and decisions? Why do some equations fit reality so…
