1. Abstract: syntax, semantics and literature We might attribute the explosive development in mathematics since the end of the nineteenth century to the philosophy of formalism which liberated mathematics from its connection to observed reality and required only that it be an internally consistent symbolic system. Formalism exemplifies the role of unconstrained creative thought in arriving at understanding and exploitation of our environment, the heart of human evolution. A leading example of this phenomenon is Riemann’s invention of the differentiable manifold that enabled Einstein’s description of general relativity. I wish to bring theology into the scientific domain by exploring the hypothesis that the universe is divine. This essay suggests some of the consequences, which amount to a cognitive cosmology, flowing into physics from this assumption.
Jeffrey Nicholls