“Mathematics
is only a means for expressing the laws that govern phenomena.”
Monday, June 17, 2013
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Albert Einstein’s beguiling statement quoted above revolves
around the simple phrase “only a means for expressing the laws that govern
phenomena.”
I was struck by that phrase’s humble modesty, and yet I was undone
by its alarming profundity.
What fields of study, other than mathematics, “express the
laws that govern phenomena,” I asked? Don’t the others all bypass “the laws
that govern phenomena,” while focusing on the phenomena, instead?
Surely, there must be another means! Otherwise, Einstein could
have said “MATHEMATICS IS SOLELY THE MEANS” not simply “mathematics is only a
means?”
“An expression of one thing is the exclusion of another” is a
Latin maxim from law school, frequently used as a rule of construction to
determine the meaning of ambiguous sentences or language. There is nothing
whatsoever ambiguous about Einstein’s sentence, however; its plain meaning is
perfectly clear.
“Laws that govern phenomena” means laws that are valid and
that are therefore replicable anywhere on Earth, under prescribed conditions, regardless
of race, creed, culture, nationality, history, geography, language, economic or
political system, ecology, or education system of the particular inhabitants. Universal
laws these would be, like gravity, sunrise/sunset, or the rotation and revolution
of the Earth.
“Laws that govern phenomena” are not the phenomena,
themselves. They explain the phenomena.
To express is not to explain, although such an explanation is
surely the goal or gold of an expression.
Expression is open-end, enabling an open vision of human
possibilities. A decree is closed-ended, propagating a closed vision of human
possibilities. Whether open or closed, the same laws govern all.
#30
