Math can be used as a modelling tool for reality to great accuracy but never forget models are simplifications. Models are always at least partly wrong, and sometimes very wrong.
Like God, mathematics is beyond space and time. It has eternal life with no beginning or end. It's an alien world from outside our universe that we can visit but never communicate with.
The unusual conditions that led to the Big Bang must have extremely long odds for ever happening. However when there's nothing available to measure time, everything that can happen, happens all at once. Maybe God created the universe because he needed a clock.
Quite true. What we think of as Math, whether simple things like 2+2=4 or bigger things like transcendentals and the cardinality of infinite sets (aleph-null, etc.), is really just a way (a model if you wish) that our human brains can use to grasp and work with the underlying concepts.
E.g. The number '2' connotes a quantity, but what is the essential nature of "two-ness"? It is at once both self-evident, and yet mysterious.
Christianity has a similar topic in the Holy Trinity. Christianity is monotheistic, yet there is a Trinity, giving two millennia of religious scholars and spiritual seekers the mystery: "How can Three be One? How can One be Three?" Quantity does not always map easily to essence.
So I do agree that Math is a modelling tool. I would differ with your assessment of it being at least partly "wrong", and opine instead that we should never confuse the model with the underlying conceptual essence. Math, and mathematical notation, are just ways for humans to get things done, and perhaps, to begin to understand the nature of God, if one is so inclined.
> Maybe God created the universe because he needed a clock.
Now THAT is a marvelous philosophical idea, worthy of cogitation. Excellent!
That seems to be three of us in this thread that have a BS in physics.
“Math can be used as a modelling tool for reality to great accuracy but never forget models are simplifications.”
Back in college the first day the prof had the wave equation written on the board - it took up the entire board. He said something like “Now this is obviously too long to work with. But, if we assume a homogeneous earth we can get rid of this (erases a bunch of lines at the end)....
He kept going with numerous assumptions and got it down to two main parts of the equation IIRC. I’m guessing that with modern computers they can do the math fast enough to account for more variables now. (If they know what those variables are!)
For the answer we had to get it to whatever decimal place and show that, but then for the final answer (say a seismic velocity) we rounded it to something. 8,723.24 ft/sec -—8,700 ft/sec. “Remember that wave equation? No way you are figuring out the correct number to the 100th!”
Of course those are conventions. In the above example, I’m not sure how widespread the conventions were. I’m guessing if it was a math professor giving me the test (rather than a geophysicist) my answer of 8,700 would have been wrong.