(February 3, 2014 at 4:41 am)Alex K Wrote: I have to disagree here. None of the "laws" are "real" in any sense. They are parts of or consequences derived from theories, which themselves are approximations of nature. To give you an example, the 1/r^2 law for gravity is only an approximation, and thus a mathematical construct which fits nature kinda nicely, but isn't true in the philosophical sense such that you could discover it in nature like you discover a new planet. You can say that we discovered them in the realm of mathematics and found that they approximate nature well, but if you go that far you basically abolish the notion of constructing anything in a perverse platonic sense.
I agree that laws are not real except in a mathematical sense. Of course, I know that laws are not anything physical (duh), so we can discover them only in the realm of mathematics.
But then this brings us to the question:
If mathematics can capture the essence of everything that goes on in the universe, does that mean that reality itself is a mathematical structure?
If the answer is yes, then that would mean that math is just as real as reality itself.
