Nature

[Khandro]

Coleridge thought that everything that is meant by 'nature' - wind, sea, light, darkness, natural shapes etc. - is a form of God's language to us.
Would you agree?

[Old_Geezer]

Sounds full of wind.

[pixie374]

Nature is nature... I guess it depends what you mean by "God "? They seem to be opposites.

[Buenchico]

Given that Coleridge was usually high on opium, it might not be too wise to take anything he proclaimed too seriously!

[Mamyalynne]

Nature is energy, how you interpret that is personal to you.

[10ClarionSt]

Naaaaah! What language would dat be den?! BTW, has PP been on here lately?

[Mamyalynne]

He is still recuperating so not posting often.

[Khandro]

Mamya; //Nature is energy, how you interpret that is personal to you.//

Sorry but I don't understand that question, would you please re-phrase it.

Open question;
Does this 'Language' (if that is what it is) exist outside of humanity?
Is say, mathematics a mental invention, or does it exist in another order of reality independently outside of the human mind?

[mibn2cweus]

I'd be inclined to wager someone will disagree with this but mathematics is measurement.

[Khandro]

mib. //mathematics is measurement.//
Of course that is one aspect of how it is used by us, but Roger Penrose - who is as good a mathematician as you can get - believes that mathematics is in someway embedded in the natural order of the universe, he believes it exists independently.
He doesn't go as far as Coleridge's poetry, in fact he's a (sort of) atheist, but asks, "is it all chance?"

[TonyV]

Grecians and Egyptians used lots of mathematics construction as did the Romans.

[Khandro]

In fact some mathematicians can wax lyrical too;

"When God sings to himself, he sings algebra."

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

[naomi24]

Khandro at 21:46 Fri, Mamyalynne didn't ask a question. She gave her opinion.

No, I wouldn't agree that 'God' is speaking to us through nature which is what your question appears to suggest. Who or what is 'God'?

[Old_Geezer]

Maths would still exist if no intelligence was around to realise it. Why wouldn't it be ? On a planet with no animal life, just plants, a hill which has three trees growing on it and which experiences a storm where a lightning bolt hit one and burns it out of existence still leaves two trees (3-1=2) regardless that no mind is there to cause it. And so forth up towards the more complex maths.

[Khandro]

OG; I think it goes a bit deeper than that; e.g. if you take 3 sticks. one 3 units in length, one in 4 and the other in 5, lie them on the ground conjoined, you will form a isosceles triangle which contains an angle of 90 degrees - not approximately, but exactly 90 degrees, which is also a quadrant at the centre of a circle, & so on & so on.
These laws exist universally not only for us now, but did so when Dinosaurs roamed the planet, these are the mathematics embedded in our world, in geometry & in patterns of growth in nature, the Fibonacci spiral in shells etc.
Penrose thinks so, & so, humbly do I.

[Atheist]

Khandro, your example is not an isosceles triangle, it's a right-angled triangle. I'm not sure why its existence implies the existence of a god.

[Khandro]

Correct, sorry

[Khandro]

The right isosceles triangle is half of a square bisected diagonally - another universal law.

[Atheist]

K, I'm not sure that drawing a diagonal across a square to produce two isosceles triangles is somehow related to a law. It's surely a simple fact arising from the definitions of a square and an isosceles triangle. A law implies a law-giver, a fact simply exists.

[TonyV]

K you will end up with another right angled triangle.

[Atheist]

Tony, yes, and both are isosceles.