What Is Mathematics?

Book excerpt: So, you know what mathematics is, right? Well, if you do, you're a smarter person than Nobel laureates Albert Einstein and Eugene Wigner, who were baffled by what mathematics is and how it relates to science and the world. Wigner wrote a famous paper entitled "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences." No scientist has ever explained why mathematics is so uncannily appropriate to describing Nature. Galileo said, "The Book of Nature is written in mathematical language, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is impossible to humanly understand a word; without these, one is wandering in a dark labyrinth." Do you want to escape from the dark labyrinth? Then you must discover what mathematics really is. The answer will blow your mind. Guaranteed. Come on the greatest detective adventure of them all, where you do nothing but exercise pure deduction. Come and be a cosmic Sherlock Holmes. Put on your deerstalker and practice the pristine science of deduction. Determining the true nature of mathematics is the No. 1 problem facing humanity. To explain mathematics is to explain reality itself.