(June 5, 2020 at 7:46 am)polymath257 Wrote: If you allow intelligence great enough to discover all available patterns, then all patterns can be studied.
It depends on what we mean by "nature."
The definition I've borrowed here from the Neoplatonic mystics says that nature is a portion of the world. It is the portion which can be known by the senses -- or the scientific method. But there is more to the world than this, and the part which is not known by the senses is the supernatural.
So to them, the supernatural has patterns and its own ways of doing things which are not a part of nature. These patterns can be known -- and indeed are known by beings that are higher than people. But not through empirical repeatable quantifiable methods, which is the scientific method.
And it includes much that is knowable only to higher beings, not people.
You've been talking about numbers as if they were part of nature. Are they really? Do we know about numbers through the scientific method? Or do we know of them in other ways -- through pure logic, for example? Do we conduct scientific tests that are empirical, repeatable, quantifiable, and published in scientific journals, to know about numbers? I don't think so. And if something as important as mathematics is not known through the scientific method, then it is false to say that everything is known that way.
As all polymaths know, Plato's God is much like a number.
Blake made a traditional Neoplatonic statement by saying that the body is a portion of the soul. It is the portion of the soul which is perceived by the body's own senses. But this part (which is knowable by science) is not all. The rest of the soul, and the rest of the world, is knowable in part but not through the senses. It is not a part of the sensible world, which is by definition that part which science studies. If a scientist made assertions about the non-sensible part of the world -- that part which is not known through empirical repeatable quantifiable testing -- then he wouldn't be doing science.
So yes, the supernatural has its patterns and is knowable in principle by beings more intelligent than us. That's a part of what the supernatural is, according to this very traditional definition.
