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Is Reality Made of Mathematics?

Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis takes Platonism to its logical extreme. He proposes that every consistent mathematical structure exists physically. Our universe is one such structure, the one whose properties match what we observe. But there are infinitely many others, equally real, corresponding to every possible set of axioms and equations. Most of these mathematical universes would be simple, sterile, devoid of anything interesting. Some would have physics utterly unlike ours. A few would support complexity, life, consciousness. We find ourselves in one of those because we could not find ourselves anywhere else. This is a kind of ultimate multiverse, where existence is granted to anything mathematically coherent. There is no distinction between physical and mathematical reality. To exist mathematically is to exist physically. The universe is not described by mathematics. The universe is mathematics. This forces us to ask what we mean by physical existence. We usually think of physical things as having substance, being made of stuff. But modern physics has progressively emptied matter of substance. Atoms are mostly empty space. Particles are excitations in fields. Fields are mathematical entities defined at every point in space. What remains when you strip away the mathematics? Tegmark argues: nothing. There is no non-mathematical residue that makes something physical rather than merely mathematical. The feeling that physical things have an extra something, a realness beyond structure, is an illusion generated by our evolved brains. We perceive solidity and substance because it was useful for survival, not because it reflects fundamental reality. At the bottom, there is only pattern, relation, structure. There is only math.