The universe follows an order, and science’s goal is to understand it. For centuries, scientists have sought to understand the laws of nature by studying the results of experiments. On the other hand, as Albert Einstein said, “The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at the fundamental laws from which that universe can be built up by pure deduction.” That implies a quest for these laws through mathematics.
In The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature’s Deepest Secrets, science writer Graham Farmelo explores the relationship between physics and cutting-edge mathematics. This relationship has been controversial in recent times. With some of the world’s leading physicists having looked to modern mathematics rather than experimental findings as a source of insight for the laws of nature, they are sometimes accused of doing ‘fairy-tale physics’, unrelated to the real world. Take string theory, which identifies subatomic particles in terms of vibrating pieces of string. This is a highly mathematical concept yet to be established experimentally. While critics dismiss it, proponents of the theory point to its elegance.
Farmelo argues that even the experimental physics of today is based on the principles of quantum theory and relativity, and part of a tradition dating back to Isaac Newton. “Theoretical physicists aim to discover natural laws – patterns among quantities relating to measurements made in experiments and observations. By contrast, the patterns sought by mathematicians may have nothing to do with reality. Remarkably – some say miraculously – the patterns that most interest contemporary mathematicians have proved to be successful in helping theoretical physicists to understand nature at the deepest level,” Farmelo writes on his website.
In 1925, Einstein told his young student Esther Salaman, “I want to know how God created this world… I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” In his book, Farmelo writes, “The very fact that underneath the diversity and complexity of the university is a relatively simple order was, in Einstein’s view, nothing short of a ‘miracle, or an eternal mystery’.” Searching for a unified field theory of gravity and electromagnetism, Einstein was convinced that only mathematics could explaining the structure of the universe.