The language of the gods is math?

Copyright 2020, InterAmerica, Inc.

While listening to some classical music the other night, I was struck by how many classical composers died young: Pergolesi, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Bizet, Bellini, Boulanger, Gershwin, et al.

But Bach lived to 65 and was fecund – 20 children (Two marriages) -- and successful in life.

Douglas R Hofstadter in his superb book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid [Basic Books, 1979] – a favorite of mine and my former buddy Bruce Duensing [RIP] – elucidates the for- mulaic composing of Bach which, as fate determined, proved to be a boon to the gods (or fate) whereas those composers, listed above, met with untimely deaths, not having the genius insight to the gods that Bach apparently had.

Scientists, physicists predominately, insist that math is a truth (and practice) throughout the Universe, and that mathematical symbols, the language of science, would be known by advanced civilizations elsewhere in the cosmos.

But commonsense took over when Carl Sagan and Frank Drake helped in the design of the Voyager golden record that was attached to the spacecraft now wending its way across the vast cosmic void.

One math symbol was included -- the binary symbol for a decimal point -- and images plus some basic arithmetic.

The symbols that evolved from the 1300s to today, created by mad men of science from their delusional creative minds, do not appear on the Golden Record, nor would such symbols be recognized by a species elsewhere in the galaxy or cosmos.

The mathematical symbols employed by science, like Bach’s compositions, might enchant Earth’s gods but not an intelligent species from off Earth.

Math, like evolution, is unique to this planet, and trying to force it upon another civilized peoples elsewhere in the vast Universe is madness of the kind that afflicts science and its masters.

Only Earth’s divinities appreciate the wonders of mankind or deprecate by torture (or worse) the creations of human beings.

RR