Is the World Mathematical?

Abstract

In the preceding chapters, we proposed a hypothesis that the world is rational, in the sense that we should ascribe to it a property owing to which it can be rationally investigated. There are many methods with the help of which we could try to understand the world, but only when people started using the mathematical-empirical method did progress in understanding the world become so rapid that it had no parallel in any other field of human activity. This allows us to formulate our hypothesis more precisely: we should ascribe to the world a property owing to which it can be investigated with the help of the mathematical-empirical method. In this sense, one often says that the world is mathematical. We argue that the question why the world is mathematical is not a trivial question. It is perhaps the most important philosophical question raised by the very existence of modern science.