Does 1+1=2 only hold if there are things to count and an entity to count them?
Allan R. Willms, 2026
Imagine a world without technology;
there would be no computer science or engineering.
Imagine a world without civilization;
there would be no business, no law, no political science.
Imagine a world without people;
there would be no humanities, no social sciences, no arts.
Imagine a universe without life;
there would be no ecology, no biology, none of the life sciences.
Imagine a universe without planets and asteroids;
there would be no geology, no geography.
Imagine there was no universe: no matter, no energy, no space, no time;
there would be no chemistry and no physics.
What remains?
Maybe mathematics.
I say maybe because I do not know.
I do not know what I mean by saying something "exists" "outside" the universe.
There are some who hold that mathematics is a product of the intelligent mind
and therefore would disappear when intelligent life disappears.
But it appears to me that mathematics is essential to physics, not only its language.
When physics posits a law or theory it does so by stating a mathematical model;
the theory could not be expounded nor even conceived without it.
In fact, the mathematical model is the theory.
Then mathematics must exist for as long as physics exists --- as long as the universe.
There are some physicists who propose that our universe is actually one of many,
but that statement implies the existence of mathematics outside the universe.
You cannot count universes if mathematics only exists inside each of them.
What then is mathematics?
Is it not then an aspect of God?
Allan R. Willms, 2023