Trick or Truth?

Anthony AguirreBrendan FosterZeeya Merali

Introduction.- Children of the cosmos (S. Wenmackers).- Mathematics is Physics (M. S. Leifer).- My god, it's full of clones: Living in a mathematical universe (M. Séguin).- Let's consider two spherical chickens (T. Bolognesi).- The raven and the writing desk (I. Durham).- The deeper roles of mathematics in physical laws (K. H. Knuth).- How mathematics meets the world (T. Maudlin).- Mathematics: intuition's consistency check (K. Wharton).- How not to factor a miracle (D. K. Wise).- The language of nature (D. Garfinkle).- Demystifying the applicability of mathematics (N. Fillion).- Why mathematics works so well (N. S. Yanofsky).- Genesis of a pythagorean universe (A. Burov).- Beyond math (S. Magnusdottir).- The descent of math (S. I. Walker).- The ultimate tactics of self-referential systems (C. C. Dantas).- Cognitive science and the connection between physics and mathematics (A. Gupta Mujumdar).- A metaphorical chart of our mathematicalontology (P. Gibbs).-And the math will set you free (C. Stoica).- Appendix: List of winners.

"The entries were rigorously judged and this book is a collection of the best entries. ... the content is accessible to the general, albeit knowledgeable, reader. These essays are very well written. The result is a great book in the philosophy of science, the relationship between the human brain and its ability to abstract to the way the universe runs as a consequence of the values of the fundamental constants of physics." (Charles Ashbacher, MAA Reviews, maa.org, August, 2016)