The topic “How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?” combines 2 thesis that would appear to be mutually exclusive; that a random physical universe operating according to impersonal mathematical laws somehow meshes seamlessly with a non-random intention found in the organic world. We may reconcile these 2 positions if we accept that what is observed as intention is an illusion, a monkey, given a typewriter and enough millennium could type the complete works of Shakespeare (or an essay for this contest) but that the appearance of intelligence is statistical, the monkey at no time can be said to have actually considered a plot for Hamlet as it randomly hits the keyboard. Somewhat arrogantly however I claim an intelligent intention to write this essay, this essay then becomes evidence of that intent and I thus can reconcile the above-noted contradiction best with the argument that the separation between the organic and the physical is artificial, that the laws of physics are a subset of the laws of nature. The analogy would be of the physical laws as the operating system upon which the organic world functions as distinct programs or apps but with the laws of nature as the underlying programming language from which both are constructed. In this essay I present the thesis that the universe could have been programmed according to a set of rules that were preselected such that a swarm intelligence would emerge. I then give an example of a virtual (mathematical) universe that uses expansion applied to geometry to simulate a dimensioned (physical) universe. Using formulas for circular forms, Pythagoras theorem and wave addition, I show how we might simulate electrons, dimensions, relativity and the forces within a mathematical framework.
Malcolm Macleod