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Mathematics and the Language of Nature

F. David Peat
A text only version of this essay is available to download.

Published in Mathematics and Sciences, edited by Ronald E. Mickens (Word

Scientific, 1990)
1. Introduction
"God is a Mathematician", so said Sir James Jeans1. In a series of popular and
influential books, written in the 1930s, the British astronomer and physicist
suggested that the universe arises out of pure thought that is couched in the
language of abstract mathematics. But why should God think only in mathematics?
After all, some of most impressive achievements of the human race have involved
architecture, poetry, drama and art. Could the essence of the universe not equally
be captured in a symphony, or unfolded within a poem?
Three centuries earlier, Galileo had written, "Nature's great book is written in
mathematical language" an opinion that has wholeheartedly been endorsed by
physicists of our own time. Mathematics today occupies such an important position
in physics that some commentators have argued that it has begun to lead and
direct research in physics. In a frontier field , called Superstrings, some critics are
arguing that mathematics is actually filling in the gaps left by the lack of any deep
physical ideas. But why should mathematics play such a powerful role in physics?
Is its central position inevitable? And is the present marriage between physics and
mathematics always healthy, or are there ways in which mathematics may, at
times, block creativity? In this essay I want to explore, in a speculative and
free-wheeling way, some possible answers to these questions and to make some
suggestions as to some radical developments in a language for the physical world.
2. The Role of Mathematics
While there are exceptions, it is generally true that great mathematics is studied for
its own sake and without reference to anything outside itself. Mathematics has a
beauty all its own and there is, for the mathematician, an aesthetic joy that comes
from solving an important problem, no matter what value society may place on this
activity. In this sense, mathematics has constantly sought to free itself from its
practical origins.
Geometry, for example, began with rules for surveying, calculating the areas of
fields and making astronomical studies and acts of navigation. Probability theory
had its origins in the desire to raise gambling to a high art. But, very quickly,
mathematics shook itself free from such pedestrian origins. While it is certainly true

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that some exceptional mathematicians have begun their studies with a concrete
problem taken from the physical world, in the end, the mathematics they have
developed has moved away from these specific cases in order to focus on more
abstract relationships. Mathematics is not really concerned with specific cases but
with the abstract relationships of thought that spring from these particular
instances. Indeed, mathematics takes a further step of abstraction by investigating
the relations between these relationships. In this fashion, the whole field moves
away from its historical origins, towards greater abstraction and increasing beauty.
The English mathematician G. Hardy2 refused to justify mathematics in terms of its
utility and pursued it as an art for its own sake. He seem to rejoice in the very
abstraction of his own research and in its remoteness from practical applications.
Indeed, Hardy once spoke of a monument so high that no one would ever be able
to see the statue that was placed at its pinnacle - a fitting metaphor for his own,
somewhat extreme, view of the role of mathematics.
In von Neumann words, mathematics is "the relation of relationships." Today it is
possible to go further, for a that branch of mathematics called Category theory is
not concerned with any particular field of mathematics but with the relationships
between the different fields themselves! Mathematics at this level has the
appearance of the purest and most rarefied thought. It is like a piece of music of
such abstract perfection that the realization of a single performance would destroy
its purity.
But it is exactly at this point that a staggering paradox hits us in the teeth. For
abstract mathematics happens to work. It is useful. It is the tool that physicists
employ in working with the nuts and bolts of the universe! Indeed, scientists of the
old school referred to mathematics as "the handmaid of physics". But why should
an abstract codification of pure thought, divorced from any reference to physical
objects and material processes, be so useful in the daily practice of science? To
echo Eugene Wigner's famous remark, mathematics is unreasonably effective.
There are many examples, from the history of science, of a branch of pure
mathematics which, decades after its invention, suddenly finds a use in physics.
There are also cases of a mathematical approach, developed for one specific
purpose, that is later found to be exactly what is needed for some totally different
area of physics.
Probability theory, first devised to deal with strategies of gambling, ends up as the
exact language needed to give a molecular foundation to thermodynamics - the
physical theory dealing with work and heat. But why should this be so? When
Einstein formulated his general theory of relativity he discovered that the necessary
mathematics had already been developed in the previous century. Similarly the
mathematics required for quantum theory was ready and waiting. Group theory, the
cornerstone of much of theoretical physics of the last fifty years, had its origins in
fundamental mathematics of the 18th and 19th centuries. And, when it comes to
Superstrings, a topic at the frontiers of contemporary theoretical physics, the
mathematical tools of cohomology and differential geometry are waiting to be used.
On the face of it, this apparently perfect marriage between abstract mathematics
and the study of the physical world is as improbable as discovering that a piece of
modern sculpture fits exactly as the missing component of some complex new
engine!
How is it possible to account for this unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
and for the powerful role it plays in physics today? One approach is to take the hint
offered by Galileo and view mathematics as a language. Just as natural language

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is used for everyday thought and communication, so too, physics has to make use
of whatever mathematical languages happen to be lying around. Mathematics, in
this view, is a tool and, like the hammer or screwdriver, we select the available tool
that best fits the job.
3. Mathematics as Language
It is common to talk of "the language of mathematics". But is mathematics really a
language? Does it possess the various properties that are characteristic of other
natural languages? Clearly mathematics does not have the same fluency as a
natural language and, even more obviously, it is rarely spoken aloud. This suggest
that mathematics is really a more restrictive limited form of language. Nevertheless,
the suggestion is that everything mathematics can do must ultimately find its origin
in language. This means that the rich and abstract proofs and theorems of
mathematics can ultimately be traced back to thoughts and arguments that were
once voiced in language--albeit in a long winded and cumbersome way. Now, it is
obvious that mathematics doesn't look anything like natural language. Mathematics
deals with numbers and symbols, it is used to make calculations and it's form is
highly abstract. On the other hand, all these features may already be enfolded
within natural language. The power of language lies in the way meaning can be
conveyed through form and transformation. The Ancient Greeks, for example,
realized that truth could be arrived at through various patterns of sentences.
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore: Socrates is mortal.
Or, to take another pattern,
Some mathematicians are clever.
All mathematicians are animals.
Therefore: Some animals are clever.
What is striking about these patterns is that the truth of the conclusion does not
depend on the content of the sentences but on their form. In other words,
substitutions do not affect the validity of the proof:
All [cats] are [wanderers].
[Minou] is a [cat].
Therefore: [Minou] is a [wanderer].
Clearly these patterns and substitutions have something in common with algebra.
Other transformations are also possible within language.
From:
John shut the door.
We get:
The door was shut by John.
These are only a few of the great range of abstract operations possible within
language. Indeed the linguist Noam Chomsky3 has argued that this ability arises
genetically and is inherent in all human thought. To take Chomsky's idea even
further we could say that mathematics has isolated and refined several of the
abstract elements that are essential to all human languages. An extreme form of
this argument would be to say that while mathematicians may make abstract

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discoveries and develop new mathematical forms, in the last analysis they are
simply representing something that is inherent in human thought and language.
The normal way we express and communicate our thought is through language
and mathematics becomes an formal extension of this process. So when physicists
seek a rational language in which to express their insights, they simply take what
happens to be at hand - the best available mathematics. It is not therefore
surprising that mathematics happens to work.
Mathematics has played a vital role in raising the speculations an earlier age to the
highest peaks of intellectual enquiry. But I am now putting forward the hypothesis
that physicists have, in fact, no alternative. Mathematics has been forced on them
as the only language of communication which can also serve to make, with
precision and economy, quantitative predictions and comparisons. And, when no
Isaac Newton happens to be around to develop a new mathematical language
hand in hand with new physical insights, then physics has to make do with what is
available.
In those cases in which the form of the mathematical language makes a perfect
marriage with to the content of the physical ideas, then the communication and
development of physics is highly successful. But this may not always be the case.
Sometimes it may turn out that a particular mathematical language is forced, by
physics, to say things in cumbersome ways. The mathematics actually gets in the
way of further creativity. At the other extreme, it is the very ease of expression that
drives a theory in a particular direction so that mathematics actually directs the
evolution of physics, even when new physical insights are lacking. In other words, I
want to question Wigner's claim that mathematics is unreasonably effective. For it
could be that the whole thing is an illusion brought about because physics has no
other language in which to communicate quantitative statements about the world.
In the past decades there has been much talk about paradigm shifts and scientific
revolutions - yet it is still possible to retain the same mathematical language after
such a radical shift. In short, the whole baggage of unexamined presuppositions
that are inherent in the mathematics are carried over to the new physics.
Any writer knows that language has the power to take over his or her ideas. Words
have their own magic, and a style, once adopted, will gather its own momentum. It
has been said that a writer is possessed by all the texts that have been previously
written. As soon as we put pen to paper and chose a particular literary form then
what we write is, to some extent predetermined. I would suggest that the same is
true of physics. That the adoption of a particular mathematical language will subtly
direct the development of new ideas. Moreover there are times when mathematics
may actually block the operation of a free, creative imagination in physics. Since
mathematics occupies such a prominent place in physics today, these are vital
questions to be explored.
In arguing that mathematical languages direct and influence our thought in science,
we now see that the real danger arises from always focusing on the physical ideas
and not giving attention to the language in which they are expressed! As long as
physicists view mathematics simply as a tool then it is possible to ignore the subtle
but very powerful influence it has over the way they think and how they express
their thoughts. In fact, I believe that a good argument can be made that a particular
form of mathematics has been blocking progress in physics for decades- this is the
Cartesian co-ordinate system, a mathematical form that has survived several
scientific revolutions!
A major problem facing modern physics is that of unifying quantum theory with

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relativity. One theory deals with discrete, quantized processes below the level of
the atom. The other with the properties of a continuous space-time. While it is
certainly true that deep physical issues must be resolved before significant
progress can be made, I would also argue that the mathematical language in which
the quantum theory is expressed is at odds with what the theory is actually saying.
While quantum mechanics and quantum field theory are a truly revolutionary
approaches, the mathematics they are based on goes right back to Descartes--to
the same Cartesian co-ordinates we all learned at school. For three hundred years
physics has employed the language of co-ordinates to discuss the movement of
objects in space and time. Later developments like the calculus also rely upon this
idea that space can be represented by a grid of co-ordinates. But it is this same
mathematical language that is at odds with the revolutionary insights of quantum
theory. Cartesian co-ordinates imply continuity, and the notion of space as a
backdrop against which objects move. So whatever new insights physics may have
in this area, they are still being expressed in an inappropriate language. This, I
believe, represents a major block to thinking about space and quantum processes
in radically new ways.
The example of how the Cartesian grid has dominated physics is rather obvious.
But there may be many other, and more subtle, ways in which particular
mathematical forms are currently directing science and limiting the possibilities for
its development.
4. Mathematics Beyond Language
But is it really true that mathematics is nothing more than a limited and abstract
version of natural language? I would argue that mathematics is both more, and
less, than a language. Since it involves highly codified forms, mathematics makes it
easy to carry out calculations, to demonstrate proofs and to arrive at true
assertions. But, in my opinion, this is only a surface difference, a feature of the
convenience and economy of mathematics over ordinary language. A more
significant way in which mathematics goes beyond language is that it involves a
particular kind of visual and sensory motor thinking that does not seem to be
characteristic of ordinary language. Some parts of mathematics deal with the
properties and relationships of shapes. While these properties can be generalized
to many dimensions and to highly abstract relationships, nevertheless,
mathematicians have told me that their thinking in these particular fields enters
regions which do not involve language in any way. It calls upon a sort of direct,
internal visualization and may even involve an internal sense of movement and of
tiny muscular reactions. This "non-verbal" thinking may also take place in other
fields of mathematics and appears to involve a form of mental activity that goes
beyond anything in the domain of a spoken or written language. It could be that, at
such times, mathematical thought has direct access to a form of thinking that is
deeper and more primitive than anything available in any natural language. This
pre-linguistic mental activity may be the common source from which both
mathematics and ordinary language emerge.
On the other hand, mathematics is also less than a language, in that it lacks the
richness, the ability to deal with nuance, the inherent ambiguity and the rich
strategies for dealing with this ambiguity. In this sense, mathematics is a limited,
technical language in which much that is of deep human value cannot be
expressed.
5. Mathematics and Music
It is possible to explore the nature of mathematics, and its relationship to physics,

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in another direction. By comparing it to music. Mathematics is an abstract system
of ordered and structured thought, existing for its own sake. It is possible to apply a
similar description to music. Indeed the 20th century composer, Edgar Varese, has
written that "music is the corporealization of thought". Listening to Bach, for
example, is to experience directly the ordered unfolding of a great mind. This
suggests that music and mathematics could be related in some essential way. On
the other hand who would employ music to express a new theory of the universe? (
But could this simply be a prejudice that is characteristic of our earth-bound
consciousness? Do beings in some remote corner of the universe explore the
nature of the universe in music and art?)
Music and mathematics are similar, yet different. Indeed, I believe that both the
strengths and the weakness of mathematics lie in this difference. Mathematics has
developed to deal with proof and logical truth in a precise and economical way.
Mathematics also makes a direct correspondence with the physical world through
number, calculations and quantitative predictions.
While it could be said that music is "true" in some poetical sense and that the
development of a fugue has a logical ordering that is similar to that of a
mathematical proof, on the other hand these are not the primary goals of music.
Music deals with the orders of rational thought, yet it is also concerned with the
exploration of tension and resolution, with anticipation, with the control of complex
sensations of sound and with the evolution and contrast of orders emotion and
feeling. To borrow a Jungian term, music could be said to be more complete, for it
seeks a harmony between the four basic human functions; thought balanced by
feeling and intuition by sensation. While mathematicians may experience deep
emotions when working on a fundamental piece of mathematics, unlike composers,
their study, per se, is not really concerned with the rational ordering of these
emotions or with the relationships between them. The greatest music, however,
moves us in a deep way and leaves us feeling whole. It engages thought and
emotion, it expresses itself through the physical sensation of sound.
In this sense it could be said that physics, with its reliance on the language of
mathematics, must always present an incomplete picture of the universe. Its
language is impoverished, for it lacks this basic integration of the four human
functions. It can never fully express the essential fact of our confrontation with,
participation in, and understanding of nature.
But is it possible, in wonder, that, in the distant future, science, inspired by the
example of music, may develop a more integrated and versatile language, one
which would have room, perhaps, for the order of emotion and direct sensation
while, at the same time, retaining all the power of a more conventional
mathematics?.
There is yet another significant way in which "the language of music", and of the
other art, differs from mathematics. While all these languages are concerned with
relationships and rational orders of thought, the arts are able to unfold these orders
in a more dynamical way by exploring the way order is generated in the act of
perception itself. Quantum theory is also concerned with the indivisible link
between the observer and the observed. And this suggests that it would be to the
advantage of physics to develop a similar flexibility in its basic language giving it
the ability to explore the rich orders that lie between the observer and the
observed.
Let me explain what I mean. A great work of art possesses a rich internal order. In
music, for example, a theme may be transposed, inverted, played backwards and

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otherwise transformed in a variety of ways which still retain a certain element of its
order. Of course, this is only one simple example of the sorts of order explored in a
musical composition, indeed the order of great music is so rich as to defy complete
analysis. Likewise, a painting contains complex relationships between its lines,
masses, areas, colors, movements and so on. In some cases such objective orders
may have much in common with the sorts of order that are found in mathematics.
But what makes any work of art come alive is its contemplation by the human
observer:- Music played in a vacuum is not music, art that is never seen is not art.
For the work of art arises in that dynamic interaction between the active perception,
intelligence, knowledge and feeling of the viewer and the work itself.
To take a particular example, some of the drawings of an artist like Rembrant,
Picasso or Mattise or a Japanese master appear, on the surface, to be
extraordinarily simple. Few marks appear on the paper when contrasted with, for
example, the detailed rendering done by an art student. A trivial analysis would
suggest that the sketch contains "less information" than the detailed rendering and
that its order is relatively impoverished. Yet the confrontation of a viewer with a
Mattise drawing is a far richer experience in which complex orders of thought and
perception are evoked. To make the slightest change in position, direction, gesture
or even thickness of a single line can destroy the balance and value of a great
drawing, but may have only a negligible effect on a student work. In this sense
great art has an order of such richness, subtlety and complexity that it is beyond
anything that can be addressed in current mathematics. Yet it is something to
which the trained viewer can immediately respond.
Indeed, the rich order of the drawing lies not so much in some objective order of
the surface marks on the paper, but in the whole act of perception itself and in the
way in which the drawing generates a hierarchy of orders within the mind. Lines
evoke anticipations in the mind that may be fulfilled in harmonious or in unexpected
ways. The mind is constantly filling in, completing, creating endless complex
orders. A single line may suggest the boundary of a shadow, the outline of a back
or it may complete a rhythm created by other lines. Indeed the act of viewing a
drawing could be said to evoke an echo, or resonance, of the whole generative
process by which the drawing itself was originally made. The essence of the
drawing does not therefore lie in a static, objective order--the sort of thing that can
be the subject of a crude computer analysis involving the position and direction of a
number of lines. Rather, it is a rich dynamical order, an order of generation within
the mind. Through his or her art, the creator of the drawing has called upon the
nature of the subject, the history of art, and on all the strategies that are employed
in perception. So standing before a drawing involve a deep and complex interplay
between the work itself, the visual center of the brain, memory, experience,
knowledge of other paintings, and of the human form. The eyes, memory, mind and
even the body's sensory-motor system become involved in the generation of a
highly complex order, an order in which every nuance of the drawing has its part.
The order within an economical drawing may, therefore, be far richer than we first
suspect. For its power lies not so much in some surface pattern of the lines but in
the controlled and predetermined way in which these lines generate, through the
act of perception itself, infinite orders within the mind and body. While attention has
certainly been given, by researchers in Artificial Intelligence, to what is called the
early processes of vision, it is clear that the sort of order I am talking about lies far
beyond anything that mathematics or artificial intelligence could analyze or even
attempt to deal with at present.
I feel that the description of complex orders of perception and generation is a rich
and powerful area into which mathematics should expand. It may also have an

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important role to play in physics. Quantum theory, for example, is concerned with
the indissoluble link between observer and observed and it would be interesting to
make use of a mathematics which can express the infinite orders that are inherent
in this notion of wholeness.
A similar sort of argument applies to music. Some musicologists have gone so far
as to analyze music by computer, and to calculate its "information content ",
concluding, for example, that "modern music" contains more information than
baroque music! But the essence of music does not lie in some measure of its
objective information content but in the rich and subtle activity it evokes within the
mind. Music and art are seeds that, in a controlled and deliberate way, generate a
flowering of order and meaning within the mind and body of the listener.
To return to an earlier point; this generative order suggests a reason why great
music could indeed act as a metaphor for a theory of the universe. Music is
concerned with the creation and ordering of a cosmos of thought, feeling, intuition
and sensation and with the infinite dynamical orders that are present within this
cosmos. In this sense, music could be said to echo the generation and evolution of
a universe. Clearly our present mathematics lacks this essential dimension. But
could, in fact, mathematics move in such a direction? A new mathematics would
not simply offer a crystallization of thought but also explore the actual generative
activity of the orders of this thought within the body and mind. Such a new formal
language would represent a deep marriage between mathematics and the arts. It
would involve a mathematics that requires the existence of another mind to
complete it, in an ordered and controlled way, and, in so doing, this mathematics
would becomes the germ of some, much deeper order.
6. Mathematics and the Brain
Let us return again to the question of the unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics. As we have seen, one answer is to consider mathematics as a
language, indeed the only available language that can deal, in an economical and
precise way, with quantitative deductions about the world. Mathematics, in this
sense, is a restricted form of natural language. But, in other ways, it goes beyond
language. Physics, however, is always in the position of being forced to use
mathematics to communicate at the formal level. The question, therefore, is not so
much one of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, but of physicists
having no real alternatives.
But there may be other ways of looking at this question. One way is to suggest that
mathematics, in its orders and relationships, is a reflection of the internal structure
and processes of the brain. In moving towards the foundations of mathematics one
would therefore be approaching some sort of direct expression of the controlling
activities of the brain itself. And, since the brain is a physical organ that has
evolved through its interactions with the material world, it is inevitable that the
brain's underlying processes should model that world in a relatively successful way.
Human consciousness has developed, in part, as an expression of our particular
size and scale within the environment of our planet. It is a function of the particular
ranges of senses our bodies employ, and of our need to anticipate, plan ahead,
hold onto the image of a goal and remember. Moreover consciousness has
created, and been formed by, society and the need to communicate. It has brought
us to the point where we can ask, for example, if we think because we have
language or, if we have language because we think? Or if the answer could lie
somewhere in between.
According to this general argument, the brain's function is a direct consequence of,

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and a reflection of, our particular status as physical and social beings on this
planet. Mathematics, moreover, is a symbolic expression of certain of the ordered
operations of this brain. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that mathematics
should serve as a suitable language in which to express the theoretical models that
have been created by this same brain.
This whole question of the formal strategies employed by the brain is the province
of cognitive psychology. One of the pioneers in that field was Jean Piaget5. Piaget's
particular approach was to suggest that the basis of our thought and action could
be traced to the logic of the various physical transactions we had with the world
during our first weeks, months and years. Piaget believed that these same logical
operations are also present in mathematics and, in this respect, he had a very
interesting point to make. It is well known, he pointed out, that mathematics can be
arranged in a hierarchical structure of greater and greater depth. In the case of
geometry, for example, the top, and most superficial, level is occupied by those
semi-empirical rules for surveying and calculating shapes that were known to the
Egyptians and Babylonians. Below that could be placed the more fundamental,
axiomatic methods of the ancient Greeks. The history of geometry demonstrates
the discovery of deeper and more general levels, Euclidian geometry gives way to
non-Euclidian, beneath geometry is topology, and topology itself is founded on
even more general and beautiful mathematics. The longer a particular topic has
been studied, the deeper mathematicians are able to move towards its foundations.
But Piaget, pointed out, this historical evolution is a direct reversal of the actual
development of concepts of space in the infant. To the young child, the distinction
between intersecting and non-intersecting figures is more immediate than between,
say, a triangle, square and circle. To the infant's developing mind, topology comes
before geometry. In general, deeper and more fundamental logical operations are
developed earlier than more specific rules and applications. The history of
mathematics, which is generally taken as a process of moving towards deeper and
more general levels of thought, could also be thought of as a process of excavation
which attempts to uncover the earliest operations of thought in infancy. According
to this argument, the very first operations exist at a pre-conscious level so that the
more fundamental a logical operation happens to be, the earlier it was developed
by the infant and the deeper it has become buried in the mind. Again, this suggests
a reason why mathematics is so unreasonably effective, for the deeper it goes the
more it becomes a formal expression of the ways in which with interact with, and
learn about, the world.
But, it could be objected, if the history of mathematics and, to some extent, of
theoretical physics, is simply that of uncovering, and formalizing, what we already
know then how is it possible to create new ideas, like Einstein's relativity, that
totally lie outside our experience? The point is, however, that this equality or
interdependence of space and time was already present in all the world's language.
Rather than coming to the revelation that time and space must be unified then have
never really been linguistically separated! According to this general idea, what may
appear to be novel in physics and mathematics is essentially the explicit unfolding
of something that is already implicit within the structuring of human thought--of
course physics itself also makes use of empirical observations and predictions. For
this reason, the intelligent use of mathematics as a language for physics will
necessarily make sense.
Piaget's notion, that the evolution of mathematics and physics is forever reaching
towards the deepest structures of the mind, is certainly interesting. However, I feel
that there is a certain limitation in the approach of cognitive psychology, with its

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emphasis upon strategies and programs of the brain, on successions of logical
steps and on algorithms of thought. There is not sufficient space in this article to
develop any detailed arguments, but I believe that, while cognitive psychology may
produce some valuable insights, in its present form it does not capture the true
nature of human intelligence in general, and mathematics in particular. Formal logic
is an impoverished way of describing human thought and the practice of
mathematics goes far beyond a set of algorithmic rules. The mathematician Roger
Penrose6 has, for example, produced compelling arguments why machine
intelligence must be limited--a Turing machine, or indeed any other algorithmic
device, will never be able to carry out all the sorts of things that a human
mathematician can do. Mathematics may indeed reflect the operations of the brain,
but both brain and mind are far richer in their nature than is suggested by any
structure of algorithms and logical operations.
7. Mathematics and Archetypes
In this final section I am going to become more speculative and explore yet another
approach to the question of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. I want
to suggest that mind and matter, brain and consciousness are two sides of a single
process, something that emerges out of a deeper and hitherto unexplored ground.
In this sense the order of generation that gives rise to the universe has a common
source with the generative order of consciousness. In its deepest operation,
therefore, our intelligence could be said to mirror the world. But what can one say
about the nature of this source? According to the classical Chinese philosopher,
Lau Tzu, "the Tao which has a name in not the Tao", which seems to say it all.
Of course, the idea of an unknown, unconditioned source which is the origin of
matter and consciousness may seem far fetched to many readers. But it is, after
all, simply another way of accounting for the unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics. Our own age is out of sympathy with such sweeping assertions as
"God is a mathematician", but suppose one suggests that mind and the universe
have an common order and that the source of material and mental existence lies in
a sort of unconditioned creativity, and in the generation of orders of infinite subtlety
and complexity7? While the nature of such an order may never be explicitly known
in its entirely, it may still be possible to unfold certain of its aspects through music,
art and mathematics. The great aesthetic joy of mathematics is not, therefore, far
from the joy of music or any great art, for it arises in that sense of contact with
something much greater than ourselves, with the heart of the universe itself.
Mathematics is effective when it becomes a hymn to this underlying order of
consciousness and the universe, and when it expresses something of the truth
inherent in nature.
This idea has been expressed in other ways. Carl Jung, for example, spoke of the
archetypes. This is a difficult concept to convey in a short definition but, very
roughly, the archetypes could be taken as those dynamical orders, unknowable in
themselves, that underlie the structure of the collective unconscious. The
archetypes are never seen directly but their power can be experienced in certain
universal symbols. In his more speculative moments, Jung also hinted at
something that lay beyond matter and mind, but included both. This psychoid, as
he called it, is related to the archetypes and suggests that the same underlying
ordering principles give birth and structure to both matter and mind. Just as human
consciousness arises out of the collective unconscious, so too the universe itself
arises out of something more primitive. Again we meet this notion that the same
underlying order gives rise to both matter and mind.
Of particular interest is the importance that Jung placed upon numbers. Numbers,

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according to Jung, are direct manifestations of the archetypes and must therefore
be echoes of the basic structuring processes of the universe itself. It is certainly
true that numbers are mysterious things. To return, for a moment, to the connection
between mathematics and language. When it comes to language, it is a basic
axiom of linguistics that "the sign is arbitrary". In other words, the meaning of a
world does not lie in how it sounds or the way it is written but in the way it is used. If
you want to know the meaning, the philosopher Wittgenstein said, look for the use.
By contrast, the basic units of mathematics, the numbers, are totally different, they
are not arbitrary but have a meaning and existence of their own. While the names
given to the numbers may be arbitrary, the numbers themselves are not, 0, 1, 2, 3,
are not symbols whose meaning changes with time and use but are the givens of
mathematics. In a sense they are almost platonic. It has been said, for example,
that God made the numbers and the rest of mathematics is the creation of human
intelligence. It is these same numbers that, Jung claims, are manifestations of the
archetypes. Indeed Jung's argument does have a ring of truth about it for numbers
are certainly curious things and the unfolding of their properties remains one of the
most basic forms of mathematics. Could it be true, as the Jungians suggest, that
the numbers are expressions of the archetypes or orders that underlie the universe
and human consciousness?8
Curiously enough, this idea may have found favour with one famous
mathematician. One of the most brilliant pure mathematicians in this century, S.
Ramanujan, gave little value to mathematical proof but appeared to arrive at his
remarkable theorems in number theory by pure intuition alone. Ramanujan himself,
however, believed that these profound results were given to him by a female deity.
In Jung's terminology, this deity would also be a manifestation of the archetypes.
So, to Ramanujan, the whole order of mathematics, with its underlying truth and
beauty, essentially lies in a domain beyond logical truth and rational argument. It is
something which can, at times, be touched directly by the mathematician's intuition
and in a way that appears almost sacred. As to the nature of this domain, we can
call it the archetypes, psychoid, ground of being or unconditioned, creative source.
But what does it matter? What counts is that a remarkable mathematician
bypassed rational argument and the need for vigorous proof and picked out
outstanding theorems out of the air. And what is equally staggering is that, in all
likelihood, these symphonies of pure thought may one day have totally practical
applications in the real word.
8. Conclusion
The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics remains an open question,
although I have given some suggestions as to why it appears to work. I have also
argued that mathematics may not always be as effective as we suppose, for
physical ideas are sometimes forced to fit a particular mathematical language, in
other cases the very facility of the language itself may drive physics forward,
irrespective of any new physical ideas!
I have also suggested ways in which improvements in the formal language of
physics could be advanced. A major area would be to discover a mathematics of
complex and subtle orders, a formal way of describing what seems, to me, to be an
essential feature of the universe. There have recently been several attempts to
describe complex orders-- Mandelbrot's fractal theory is capable to describing and
generating figures of infinite complexity; David Bohm's notion of the implicate order
is a powerful concept but has yet to find an appropriate mathematical expression.9
Finally, I have also argued that there are times when the mathematical language of

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physics fails to capture the essential fact of our being in the universe. And here I
must reveal another prejudice. Physics, to me, has always been concerned with
understanding the nature of the universe we live in; a way of celebrating and
coming to terms with our existence in the material world, rather than a matter of
discovering new technologies and accumulating more knowledge. In is in this light
that I have criticized the role of mathematics in physics and have hinted at the way
new language forms could be developed. Of course I acknowledge the great
service that mathematics has done for physics, how it has lifted it from speculation
to precision, and, of course, I recognize the great power and beauty of
mathematics that is practiced for its own sake. But here, at the end of the 20th
century we must not rest on our laurels, the whole aim of our enterprise is to
penetrate ever deeper, to move towards a more fundamental understanding and a
more complete celebration of the universe itself. In this undertaking in which
prediction, calculation and control over the physical world also have a place but
they do not become the whole goal of the scientific enterprise. It is for this reason
that I am urging physicists to play closer attention to the mathematical language
they use every day.
This whole concern with discovering and portraying the complex orders of nature,
was also a preoccupation of the writer Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf was concerned
with the order of the moment, with crystalizing, in language, the complex
sensations, experiences and memories that make up each instant in a persons life.
She recognized that, in the last analysis, the success of this enterprise depends on
creating a fitting means of expression, on language and on words. Her own
observations on this process convey precisely what I have been attempting to say
in this essay
"Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; but a luminous halo, a
semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to
the end. Is it not the task to the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and
uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as
little mixture of the alien as possible?"
For James Joyce it is the epiphanies or transcendent moments of life that have a
special richness. They can occur at any instant and it is the business of language
to capture these , even "transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant
body of evolving life". For Virginia Woolf this radiant force of the moment must be
captured by language "it is or will become a revelation of some order; is a token of
some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words.
9. References

1. See, for example, J. Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, Cambridge University

Press, 1930.
2. G.H.Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge University Press, 1967.
3. N. Chomsky, Syntatic Structures, Mouton Pubs, The Hague, 1957.
4. For a preliminary discussion on the role of language in science see,
A.J.Ford and F. D. Peat, Foundations of Physics 18, 1233-1242, 1988.
5. See, for example, J. Piaget, Structuralism, Harper Torchbooks, Harper &
Row, N.Y. 1971.
6. R. Penrose, " Question Physics and conscious thought" in Quantum
Implications: Essays in Honour of David Bohm, eds. B.J.Hiley and F. David

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Peat., Routledge and KeganPaul, London and New York, 1987.
See also Penrose in Mindwaves, ed Colin Blakemore, Blackwells, Oxford,
1988
See also R. Penrose, The Emperor's New Clothes, Oxford University Press,
Oxford 1989.

7. See, for example, F. David Peat, Synchronicity: the Bridge Between Matter
and Mind, Bantam, N.Y., 1987.
8. M-L von Franz, Number and Time, Northwestern Universty Press, Evanston,
1974.
9. A discussion of complex orders is given in, D. Bohm and F.D. Peat, Science,
Order and Creativity, Bantam, N.Y., 1987.
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