Possibly one of the most intriguing ideas I've ever heard is that there is no difference between "true" in the sense of "1+1=2" and "true" in the sense of "polar bears exist". The universe isn't described by the mathematics we have constructed to explain it, it is that mathematics.
In that sense, the question of what happened before our universe is similar to the question of what happened before 1+1=2... sort of a strange thing to ask. Our universe exists because it is a coherent tautology.
Of course, like all metaphysical posturing it's almost certainly impossible to ever know. But I find the elegance of the idea appealing.
Edit: I believe I was thinking of Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis, but also a little of David Lewis's modal realism:
One of the dirty secrets of mathematics is that not all axiomatic systems
are equally successful. There is a kind of survivorship bias whereby
axiomatic systems that are "interesting" are studied whereas axiomatic systems
that are "boring" fall into obscurity.
For example, number theory has an incredibly rich structure that stems from
the very simple axioms of peano arithmetic. Linear algebra is another field
that has been amazingly fruitful, not just in physics but also in pure
mathematics too.
Those axiomatic systems survived infant mortality and grew to become adults,
but they are the rare exceptions.
What "the universe is math" really means is that the universe has structure.
The universe is not complete randomness, nor is it complete emptiness. The
universe has enough structure that we can use increasingly sophisticated
mathematics to describe it.
But don't think that the universe embodies all of mathematics. There are
vast wastelands of mathematics that people thought up that didn't end
up being interesting, even if internally consistent.
What is really happening is the intersection of survivorship bias in pure
mathematics with the anthropic principle in physics. We can observe the
structure of the universe only because it has structure, and there are
certain theories of mathematics that survived because they are not "boring".
Is it a surprise that the "not boring" kinds of mathematics are often the
kind required to describe the structure of the universe?
Note that this idea -- that the basis of the universe is math itself -- is attributed to the presocratic philosopher Pythagoras.
In the ensuing Platonic worldview, it was understood that the world began with total Oneness. In modern terms, that's treating the entropy of the universe as equal to 1; there is only one state for the entire universe to be in. Then, this increases to twoness, between the something and the nothing. As the something and the nothing interact, that interaction is the threeness; and from the three, the multitude. They then believed that this resulted in the formations of geometry which led to the elements, which they expected to consist of the simplest 3 dimensional shapes. They were pretty much spot on, except they didn't know that the spherical harmonics of atoms are even simpler than the platonic forms.
Not a bad cosmology for 2500 years ago. I think there is still a lot of profound thought to process and consider.
>In modern terms, that's treating the entropy of the universe as equal to 1; there is only one state for the entire universe to be in. Then, this increases to twoness, between the something and the nothing. As the something and the nothing interact, that interaction is the threeness; and from the three, the multitude. They then believed that this resulted in the formations of geometry which led to the elements, which they expected to consist of the simplest 3 dimensional shapes.
>They were pretty much spot on.
Is it me or is that paragraph completely devoid of meaning? Is it actually saying anything? This reads like medieval scholastic philosophy: so far up its own bottom it no longer makes any sense.
I'm curious what you find meaningless about a plausible mathematical origin story for the universe. You don't sense meaning in the idea of "Oneness" or "Twoness", I'm guessing? Oneness is clear, I hope and twoness can be understood as a contrast or gradient (which we know to be necessary for energy flows). I'd be happy to unpack further.
And by saying something, you mean predicting something? One clear prediction (from the Pythagorean Democritus) is that the geometries of atoms would determine their physical properties. Is that meaningful?
I don't know if your comment intends to dismiss all premodern scholarship, but I would guess that there is more depth and meaning than you may have personally encountered.
I'd be happy to share some references or further ideas.
> like all metaphysical posturing it's almost certainly impossible to ever know
The concept that we can round off infinity and fit it within some tidy scientific experiment shall have seemed quaint by the time we meet the Almighty.
Nevertheless, reverse-engineering reality is our task under the sun, so: best be about it.
In that sense, the question of what happened before our universe is similar to the question of what happened before 1+1=2... sort of a strange thing to ask. Our universe exists because it is a coherent tautology.
Of course, like all metaphysical posturing it's almost certainly impossible to ever know. But I find the elegance of the idea appealing.
Edit: I believe I was thinking of Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis, but also a little of David Lewis's modal realism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_universe_hypothes...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism