When I first became fascinated with mathematics’ tightly knit abstract structures, its prominence in physics and engineering reassured me. Mathematics’ indisputable value in science made it clear that my preoccupation with its intangible expressions was not pathological. The captivating creative activity of doing mathematics has real consequences...
Are thoughts more fundamental to our reality than particles? “Well, how can you talk if you haven’t got a brain?” Dorothy asked the scarecrow. And after a moment’s glance toward the sky, he replied honestly, “I don’t know.”Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, an influential mathematician and philosopher, whose work spanned the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, argued methodically that the building blocks of reality are actually dimensionless units that have more the character of a mathematical point than an elementary particle...
