Seeing The World With A Mathematician's Eyes

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For centuries, people have considered mathematics the purest form of knowledge — and our best bet for deciphering the hidden order of the universe. Some of the earliest mathematicians — the Pythagoreans in Ancient Greece — even started a religion based on numbers. For someone with math anxiety that might seem a little scary, but do we really live in a mathematical universe?

Steve Paulson’s been doing a series of conversations at the New York Academy of Sciences about the nature of reality. In one of many mind-bending evenings, he talked with two people who love math: physicist James Gates and science writer Margaret Wertheim.

This event was part of the Conversations on the Nature of Reality series presented by the New York Academy of Sciences and the Nour Foundation — the full series brings together leading scientists and thinkers to explore the fundamental nature of reality through the lens of scientific inquiry and personal experience.