The language of the Universe

I’ve often wished I was more mathematically talented, particularly when I sat my ‘A’ levels. My frankly mediocre performance isn’t due to disinterest, I’ve always found mathematics to be fascinating. But it wasn’t until I watched the BBC series “Story of Maths” presented by Marcus du Sautoy that I realised why.

You see I’m an Engineer that’s learned maths from a practical perspective. We’re taught particular mathematical procedures for application to specific engineering problems: the emphasis is on correct application.

But the series pointed out the sweeping range of mathematical branches in existence, each with techniques that can be applied to many different types of problem, but frequently discovered simply because they were there!

On a practical level, we’ve conceived many types of geometry and calculus, each based on their own initial assumptions, sometimes building on what went before, but often starting from a totally new perspective.

And I guess being an Engineer, the magic lies in the application. It’s possible to apply multiple types of mathematics to the same problem, using those differing viewpoints as leverage to free the solution.

The physical sciences are full of mysteries, seemingly intractable problems suddenly solved by a change in mathematical toolkit. It turns out that understanding our Universe is a function of picking the right mathematical tools for the job, those that describe the problem domain in the simplest way.

I’ve come to view mathematics as a language: a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for the physical Universe itself. Only maths provides the kind of rich syntax that’s required to understand such a mind boggling domain.

That human minds could construct this DSL is a beautiful thing, and the basis of my fascination. For me to understand how to find the right tool might take a while, fortunately there are smarter people around to show me the way.