Comment by weregiraffe

1 day ago

Nature has no language. Language is a human tool to imperfectly describe nature. Putting language before nature is magical thinking (also known as Platonism).

Yes, of course mathematics is a tool to model nature as accurately as we could. That still doesn't mean mathematics is as trivial or frivolous as manipulating symbols.

  • But what else is there to it? Mathematics has no experiments where you find new knowledge in nature. There are just symbols.