discoverers of the same would have us believe, and which later turned out
to be extremely valuable in physical applications. For example as to Hardy
( who as we stated earlier was proud of the purity of his mathematics ) it
turned out that some of his work on infinite series in number theory today
finds deep applications in cryptography∕communication theory etc. When
discovered, the mathematical matrices were thought to be beyond any ap-
plications in nature. Today, these form the bread and butter of quantum
physicists. Hence what may be a mathematical ’’gibberish” today may turn
out to attain the status of a proper and correct word in the language to
describe nature as relevant ’’applied” mathematics.
If ’’all” of mathematics can be used to explain one or the other aspect of
nature, then there would be no ’’gibberish” mathematics left. That would
mean that whatever human mind is capable of producing in mathematics
just can not go beyond some application or the other to nature. It is hard
to say at this stage whether this is correct. Further work has to be done to
see if this be indeed so. At this stage though, it appears that there is indeed
a huge amount of mathematics which finds no application in the description
or understanding of nature.
It should also be obvious that the way scientists learn to read the book of
nature, this should be independent of any cultural, sociological, historical and
personal bias. The mathematical - physical reality lies beyond our physical
and existential limitations. The example of S. Ramanujan, S N Bose et al
would clearly show that this is indeed so. Coming from completely different
social and cultural background, these scientists∕mathematicians were still
able to read the book of nature in its exact mathematical formulation. In
addition what they read could also be read by all the other scientists correctly.
And as such, it must be that the mathematical mapping of physical reality,
if done in the proper manner, is accurate and exact.
Amongst those who believe that mathematics is the language of nature
there is still another issue of misunderstanding - and that is the issue of em-
bedding. It is commonly believed that ” as mathematics is more fundamental
and larger in content, physics/science should be embedded in mathematics ”.
For example ( French (1999) ),” The relationship between mathematics and
science is clearly of fundamental concern in both the philosophy of mathe-
matics and the philosophy of science .... One possibility is to employ a model
- theoretic framework in which ’’physical structures” are regarded as embed-
ded in ’’mathematical ones” ”. Continuing in the same strain, ( Redlich