On 02-10-98 Marylou Jenkins wrote to William Elliot... 
 MJ> I am writing a paper on the philosophy of reality and  
 MJ> existence. Do you think the relationship between  
 MJ> mathematics and reality is actual, that is do we get out  
 MJ> mathematics from studying nature, or does it somehow arise  
 MJ> from consciousness? 
The Bagavad-Gita has the idea that God can make a form, animate 
it if he so chooses, and/or change that form into any other, or 
no form at all.  Thus, the Universe is no more than a collection 
of such forms, which among other things, are ideas that God has 
had.  Mathematics is a collection of ideas we have that we find 
to be useful in trying to organize the forms we perceive. There 
thus is a relationship between the idealism of math, and the 
forms that we organize using math to delineate the set boundry. 
 
Experiments in quantum mechanics has demonstrated that time and 
the three conventional dimensions are inadequate to explain what 
we perceive going on, and that to make the formulae work out, an 
extra two, at least, are needed.  Sub-atomic physics shows that 
what we perceive as solid matter is mostly empty space, and what 
remains is most easily understood as force fields.  What an atom 
is, above all, is a forceful relationship it has with everything 
else, and that relationship can be defined using math. 
 
If you apply a force, say light, to a screen, say your CRT which 
you see right this instant, then what you are dealing with, is a 
form of *projection* onto two dimensions.  The Bagavad says that 
God is a projectionist onto *three* dimensions, and that what we 
see are the forms he projected, which in turn are, just as those 
on your CRT are,- patterns.  And, patterns are mathematical. 
 
BTW: you will find much of this position in Pythagoras, where he 
argues that *everything* is mathematics.  I do not recall if he 
included chaos in his cosmology, but the evidence from fractles 
suggests it also is needed to construct, or project, 'reality'. 
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 * OFFLINE 1.58 * I dont make the rules- Im lucky if I can see what they are. 
--- Maximus 3.01
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