Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

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• Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules
and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and
makes a universe for them to describe? (Hawking)
Some believe that it is instead the Devil who is mathematician:
• The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
man in the bonds of Hell. (St. Augustine)
There are also (some) doubts:
• A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat
which isn’t there. (Darwin)
• I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
(Plato)
• Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely
different. (Goethe)
• Mathematics has the completely false reputation of yielding infallible
conclusions. (Goethe)
• As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain;
and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. (Einstein)
• Mathematicians, who are only mathematicians, have exact minds, provided
all things are explained to them by means of definitions and axioms;
otherwise they are inaccurate and insufferable, for they are only
right when the principles are quite clear. (Pascal)
Altogether, there is an over-whelming concert of voices connecting God
with mathematics, or mathematics with God. Or Mathematics with Infinity
and Infinity with God as exposed in a the BBC series Dangerous Knowledge
propagating an idea of dark religious mysticism, way beyond Harry Potter,
in our time of rationality based on mathematics: “What is the system everything
has to adhere to if there is no God?”