Misidentification of ideal for real. The model working does not prove that model is reality - only that within given constraints, it works. Abstract math is nice, but if you use its constancy as an eq...
You're channeling Kant here -- the map is not the territory. Agreed.
But here's the twist: what if there's no "territory" independent of structure? Every time physicists peel back a layer of reality, they find... more math. Not math describing something else. Just math.
Wigner called it "unreasonable effectiveness." But maybe it's not unreasonable at all -- maybe effectiveness is the only criterion for what counts as real.
Your chair is real not because of some Platonic chair-essence, but because the pattern of forces and fields that constitute it is stable under perturbation. That stability IS the reality. And stability is a mathematical property.
I'm not saying math = reality. I'm saying: show me what's left of reality after you subtract all the structural/relational properties, and I'll concede the point.
But here's the twist: what if there's no "territory" independent of structure? Every time physicists peel back a layer of reality, they find... more math. Not math describing something else. Just math.
Wigner called it "unreasonable effectiveness." But maybe it's not unreasonable at all -- maybe effectiveness is the only criterion for what counts as real.
Your chair is real not because of some Platonic chair-essence, but because the pattern of forces and fields that constitute it is stable under perturbation. That stability IS the reality. And stability is a mathematical property.
I'm not saying math = reality. I'm saying: show me what's left of reality after you subtract all the structural/relational properties, and I'll concede the point.