From the beginning of its existence, humanity has been trying to explain the surrounding world. While probably most of us can live without needing to know the secrets of the universe, for some, those mysteries become the defining elements of their life. They need to know how everything works and how we came to be here, in this life on this planet in this universe.
In addition to the pure educational value of this information, humans quickly came to realize that this type of knowledge can be used for selfish purposes, such as the gaining and maintaining of power over others. Philosophers, shamans, and the priests of various religions have been explaining the world to themselves and to others in attempts to establish rules of existence and dominance. Gods were created and shattered, countries and empires were built and destroyed, wars were fought, and people were tortured and killed to enforce various beliefs and rituals.
At some point, another category of people emerged: scientists. Those who supposedly dedicate their lives to the art of studying and explaining of the world as we know it. While they use different sets of rules and definitions to describe and study the various elements of our environment (in numerous areas of science, mind you), for the most part, these scientists still exhibit the common behavioral patterns of the generations of philosophers, tyrants, and church leaders of the past. While doing their research people tend to form opinions based on information received, and those personal reflections on the facts affect their thought farther down the line and the direction in which they continue to search for the ultimate scientific truth; opinions of others that do not result in similar conclusions are considered to be wrong until somehow proven otherwise and sometimes even after proof has been available for some time. Competitiveness in the scientific community is well known and while, on occasion, resulting in great discoveries, more often just distracts researchers from achieving their main objective.
All the above is not meant to imply that humanity did not make much progress in discovering and explaining the secrets of the universe. We have learned a lot! We managed to develop technologies that are pushing our capabilities far beyond our own comprehension. This might sound odd, and someone might say that if something is beyond one’s comprehension it is not necessarily beyond the comprehension of others more knowledgeable in the particular field of science or technology. This is unquestionably true. The issue being raised here is whether or not we really comprehend what we are achieving and observing or whether our understanding of things is affixed to the system of coordinates that was invented by us to explain things to ourselves.
Let's look at math. We often call it “The Universal Language” or the “Language of the Universe”. Indeed, it is one of the greatest tools we have in dealing with the Universe, although, in reality, it is an invention of our own being. We created it. We brought it to life to satisfy our inner need to count and measure things. It started as a basic counting tool and then evolved into a monstrous science that we use to describe and decode pretty much everything in the known world. Is it universal? Well, it is to us! Nothing else has been invented that can allow us to write down the code and rules of the universe as we see them. The languages humans use between themselves is beneficial in terms of species communication, but cumbersome in expressing things that are easily described by math equations. While math uses symbols and signs from regular human languages, it is unquestionably a language of its own.
So, do we really understand our own wisdoms, discoveries, and achievements or is our devotion to math and other common scales and views invented by ourselves preventing us from seeing beyond the horizon?