Is God A Mathematician?

摘要

In The Assayer, an eloquent dis-course on the scientific method published in 1623, Galileo Galilei observed that God's design for the universe "is written in the language of mathematics, and the characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word of it." Those sentiments may have been controversial in an era when most learned men venerated Aristotle, who had described the world quite cogently using neither formulas nor equations. But from the perspective of the twenty-first century, the unique explanatory power of mathematics seems self-evident. We know that mathematics is essential to the design of every device we use to augment our senses or control our environment, from iPods to self-defrosting refrigerators.