Mathematics and the Universe

[Purple Rabbit]

Purple Rabbit, I understand what you mean about mathematics being a formal language. However consider another intelligent species.
Their spoken language may be wildy different to any of those on earth.
However, I think their development of mathematics would be extremely similar. OK, the symbols may vary, and perhaps even a few defintions (0 factorial, square root of -1 etc) may be slightly different. But the syntax would be identical, because they are describing the same universe.

You may be right on the aliens, lilphil. There is some speculation here. The reason why you might be right though is that these aliens will be part of this same universe. And if they are a product of an evolution on another planet in this same universe, I'd expect that certain hard wired pattern recognition faculties will have developed in them also. My point is not that spoken language is some prerequisite to mathematics, but rather that the manipulation, recognition, identification, counting etc of objects is needed by any species consisting of intelligent planning agents in this universe. I'd expect that concepts like symmetry, identity, causality etc are in the piggybag of all succesfull species in this universe.