A mathematics fan myself (and a self proclaimed philosopher :), though everyone is a philosopher in their own rights), I do believe in the universality of mathematics but feel that mathematics is just an aspect of reality and not an all pervading foundation. Mathematics can be seen as a language of describing certain kinds of correlations between objects, events etc. So whether mathematics is all pervading depends on whether
i) Everything in this world is correlated
ii) Can mathematics describe all correlations in this world.
Irrespective of whether i) is true or not, I think its not too difficult to construct examples to show ii) is not true. As many would already have thought of, feelings like love, etc cannot be explained by mathematics. (Reminds me of this valentine's day quote by H.L. Mencken: Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence).
On a different note, some of you may enjoy this tangentially related blog post of mine: http://janakspen.blogspot.in/2011/05/infinite-soul-and-bit-of-discrete-…
I can say this to extend Holger's comment: Most of the things or phenomena around us can be measured (if not objectively, then perhaps subjectively), and measurement is very much mathematical. So one may feel that everything is mathematical. But in reality, measurement or correlation between entities is just one aspect of their existence. So its wrong to say mathematics can describe or is the basis of everything.
I did enjoy aspects of this article .. this has become one of my favorite sites on the internet :)
A mathematics fan myself (and a self proclaimed philosopher :), though everyone is a philosopher in their own rights), I do believe in the universality of mathematics but feel that mathematics is just an aspect of reality and not an all pervading foundation. Mathematics can be seen as a language of describing certain kinds of correlations between objects, events etc. So whether mathematics is all pervading depends on whether
i) Everything in this world is correlated
ii) Can mathematics describe all correlations in this world.
Irrespective of whether i) is true or not, I think its not too difficult to construct examples to show ii) is not true. As many would already have thought of, feelings like love, etc cannot be explained by mathematics. (Reminds me of this valentine's day quote by H.L. Mencken: Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence).
On a different note, some of you may enjoy this tangentially related blog post of mine: http://janakspen.blogspot.in/2011/05/infinite-soul-and-bit-of-discrete-…
I can say this to extend Holger's comment: Most of the things or phenomena around us can be measured (if not objectively, then perhaps subjectively), and measurement is very much mathematical. So one may feel that everything is mathematical. But in reality, measurement or correlation between entities is just one aspect of their existence. So its wrong to say mathematics can describe or is the basis of everything.
I did enjoy aspects of this article .. this has become one of my favorite sites on the internet :)