RE: Applicability of Maths to the Universe
June 13, 2020 at 12:29 am
(This post was last modified: June 13, 2020 at 12:33 am by GrandizerII.)
(June 10, 2020 at 10:22 pm)Jehanne Wrote:(June 9, 2020 at 3:31 pm)Grandizer Wrote: Was watching a debate between Graham Oppy and WLC recently on YouTube, and the topic of the debate had to do with whether or not the applicability of mathematics to the universe serves as evidence for God. WLC (and a lot of Christian thinkers) seem to think that mathematics (at least at the advanced levels) is completely a priori and will find it surprising that it nevertheless can be reliably applied to the universe in the form of physical laws and such. But I'm really not sure what the shocker here is. My understanding is that even the most advanced mathematics that is applied to reality is generally still based on aspects of reality that have been discovered/experienced, so of course when you then apply mathematical conclusions and theorems back to reality, it shouldn't be a surprise that often times there will be a successful mapping between mathematics and reality. If there is structural order in the universe, this is to be expected. But order does not necessitate the existence of God and is perfectly compatible with naturalistic views. Order, for example, might simply be the necessary manifestation that the universe exhibits, and pure chaos might perhaps be some form of an illusion. You could argue that this order still needs some grounding in something, but that is still fine with naturalism in general.
Thoughts, disagreements, go ahead.
Craig has abandoned that so-called line of "reasoning":
RationalWiki -- William Lane Craig
Even though WLC is not the main point, the debate I was referring to happened like very recently and he was using this line of reasoning. Do you mean he abandoned it very recently?
(June 10, 2020 at 7:00 am)Belacqua Wrote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Q6SWcTA9w
Just saw the video. To be honest, he doesn't really say much here. I'll give those other links a check. I do personally agree with polymath's answer, ftr. Example, if there's symmetry involved in the real world, then the maths that makes use of symmetry will naturally be applicable to the real world.
