Mathematics is a wonderful thing. Not that 9th-grade algebra was a blast, but the concept of mathematics as a language to describe how and why things happen in the world. For instance, have you ever wondered why a police siren sounds different when it is approaching than it does when it is moving away? It turns out there is a neat little mathematical equation for that. The same is true for how much weight a bridge will support, or how far a bullet will fly, or a million and one everyday occurrences that happen right under our noses. And each and every phenomenon can be expressed in the language of mathematics.
Inaveryrealsense,mathematics is a written language that conveys meaning using symbols. Just as the symbols T-h-e C-a-t I-s B-l-a-c-k have a distinct meaning in the English language, 2 + 2 = 4 has a very distinct meaning in the language of mathematics.Asplendidexampleof the language of mathematics comes from the petroleum industry.
Most people have heard the adage “oil and water do not mix.” In the absence of an added emulsifier, this statement is true: oil and water do not mix. If I mix oil and water in a container using a high-speed mixer, there is a mathematical formula that predicts how quickly the water droplets will settle to the bottom of the container when the mixer is stopped. In fact, the phenomenon is precisely described by Stokes’ Law. The mathematical languageofStokesLawsimplysays that the settling velocity (speed) of a small water droplet falling through a viscous oil is equal to: the product of the square of the droplet’s radius, the difference in density between the water droplet and the oil, and the acceleration rate due to gravity divided by three times the viscosity of the oil where the velocity of the droplet is directly proportional to gravity, the radius of the droplet, and the density difference between the water and the oil. If any of these factors increase, the settling velocity then increases as well. However, the velocity of the droplet is inversely proportional to the velocity of the water droplet, so that as the viscosity of the oil goes up, the water droplet settling velocity goes down. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but these elements together are required to calculate how fast a drop of water will settle out of the oil.
The exhausting description above is a word story describing the speed at which water separates from oil, told in the written English language. At the same time, the same story told in the language of mathematics simply looks like this: V = (g x r2 x (pp – pf)) 3 x vis And that, most people will agree, is the elegance of mathematics. Not only is the language of mathematics elegant, but it has also been noted for its inexplicable ability to describe the natural world.
The 20th-century Nobel Prizewinning physicist Eugene Wigner (1902 – 1995) argued in his famous essay The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences that the precision of mathematics was nothing short of “miraculous.” Wigner was amazed —and rightly so —at how abstract mathematical concepts—such as numbers themselves—can have no connection to the physical world and yet can so precisely predict and describe natural phenomena. After all, numbers are not concrete objects. That is, we cannot perceive numbers with the five senses. We cannot see, smell, hear, taste, or touch numbers. Therefore, it can be rightly said that abstract numbers exist only in the human mind. This, then, is truly a curious thing: how can abstract numbers that exist only in the mind be so precise in describing the concrete world which they are not a part of? Wigner asked, “Why do the same beautiful mathematical equations apply uniformly across all time and space?” These were the questions Wigner recognized and proposed to answer through what would later be termed The Argument from Mathematics for the Existence of God. Simply stated, the argument from mathematics holds that the universe is so much more likely to be randomly chaotic rather than highly ordered and could not be described mathematically at all. However, since the universe does follow a set of natural laws that can be elegantly stated in the language of mathematics, and since man was uniquely endowed to comprehend and use mathematics, then it stands to reason that there must be some nonmaterial Cause for the universe’s mathematical order. ThisCauseChristiansknowasGod.
Join us again next time as we press ever closer to answering the question: Is God Dead?
Gloria in excelsis Deo! Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics, and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife Vicki are members of the Waurika church of Christ, and live in Ardmore. You can contact him at: dr.kerley@isGoddead.com.