Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

Mathematics is the articulation of pattern. Using a handful of symbols we can encapsulate pattern with economy and precision. Galileo summed it up by declaring that the book of nature, which he believed revealed God just as surely as the Bible, is written in the language of mathematics. During the centuries that followed, thinkers have debated a secular version of the sentiment. Is mathematics a language humankind developed to describe patterns we encounter? Or is mathematics the source of reality, rendering the world’s patterns the expression of mathematical truth? My romantic sensibilities lean toward the latter. How wonderful to imagine that our mathematical manipulations touch the very foundation of reality. But my less sentimental assessment allows for mathematics to be a language of our own making, developed in part by overindulging our predilection for pattern.