Math is Not How Things Work

What Mathematical Rigor Really Means

Math’s facility comes from its shared vocabulary. That’s it. That’s its rigor. If we all speak the same language we can define things robustly.

It has nothing to do with nature’s mechanisms. There is no reason to believe nature mixes and matches its pieces using the imagined rules of a human language. Any supposed correspondence between math and nature is circular, as math is the symbolic way we reason about patterns and outcomes to begin with. It’s a lens.

Rigor means the vocabulary is controlled, it does not mean you have reached into the guts of nature and elucidated her secrets.

Rigor is good. Makes things easier. Removes ambiguity.

What it does not remove is impenetrability.

Math is not how things work, it is how we can choose to talk about our intuitions in a costly but universally understood fashion.