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Full Idea
The laws of number are not applicable to external things, and are not laws of nature, but they are applicable to judgements of external things: they are laws of the laws of nature.
Gist of Idea
The laws of number are not laws of nature, but are laws of the laws of nature
Source
Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §87)
Book Ref
Frege,Gottlob: 'The Foundations of Arithmetic (Austin)', ed/tr. Austin,J.L. [Blackwell 1980], p.99
A Reaction
We seem to be somewhere between pythagoreanism and 'the mind of God'. I feel fairly strongly that we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope here. The laws of nature 'emerge' from nature, and high-level abstractions emerge with them.
| 476 | Self-created numbers make the universe stable [Philolaus] |
| 17008 | You have discovered that elliptical orbits result just from gravitation and planetary movement [Newton, by Leibniz] |
| 17010 | We have given up substantial forms, and now aim for mathematical laws [Newton] |
| 8656 | The laws of number are not laws of nature, but are laws of the laws of nature [Frege] |
| 8381 | The constancy of scientific laws rests on differential equations, not on cause and effect [Russell] |
| 15125 | We only know the mathematical laws, but not much else [Hawthorne] |