Consider mathematics. It is numbers and structure, and it was invented by a man, then expanded from that origin. Theorems, formulae, and algorithms have since been built upon it, with infinitely more possibilities yet to be explored. Yet mathematics had a beginning. It started with us.
Sex, by contrast, is something closer to a root of existence. Biology ensures attraction between opposite genders, and pleasure is derived in order to reproduce. This is an innate form of human biology existing independent of us. It never began or ended. It is root in its form.
The same cannot be said about mathematics. What if the first people who invented it had done so differently, or had not done so at all, and it had never been discovered? What would follow? All of the abstraction that now occupies so much concern would simply not exist, because it is entirely man-made.
Or is some form of mathematics truly rooted in nature, since it did advance the understanding of the world? Even so, had it been invented or discovered differently, understanding might differ, and so might the inventions built on it. Or the same inventions might be built upon a new version of mathematics, or perhaps something else altogether.
So if mathematics, that which is considered divine and absolute, is itself an abstraction, then everything else must be questioned: morals, philosophy, science, language, and the rest. All of these are forms of abstraction. Frameworks of the absolute have somehow been developed around them. Definitive codes of morality have been written in holy books; science that revealed the laws of the universe has ironically been built upon this same mathematics; languages that we have created are now the foundation of governance and law bearing real consequence. Yet, within the framework of the accepted abstract, a reality was constructed that enabled the understanding of the universe and the pursuit of innovation that made real impact.
All of this man-made abstraction can serve as a framework for producing real change.
Perhaps the same is true of the mind. A belief, which is abstract, can be posed as absolute, or close to it, and used as a framework to build through the corners of the mind. Had intelligence never been measured, would a person still consider themselves inferior to another? Had time never been divided into milestones, would one feel behind in life? The differences would remain, as would the passing of years. Yet something of their meaning might disappear.
As a student of mathematics and computing, and a lover of philosophy, this raises an important question: how much of what is called reality is reality itself, and how much is the interface through which human minds make reality intelligible?
This may be the real question.
A man once described how he could never imagine his partner being with someone else, despite having no intention of marrying her. Suppose the biological drive towards sexual exclusivity did not exist, and society had never equated love with possession or fidelity. Would he still feel betrayed at the thought of her being with another person? How much of the hurt remains if neither his biology nor the world around him had taught him to expect her exclusivity? Perhaps the attachment itself would survive, but the betrayal would not. Or perhaps even the attachment is inseparable from the framework through which he has learned to love. This only asks the question in miniature: how much of what is felt is the thing itself, and how much is the interface we are indoctrinated into?
Consider integral calculus. Draw a curve on a sheet of paper and imagine finding the area beneath it. Integration truly gives us a way to determine that area, even when the curve bends in ways that make direct measurement impossible. The framework can tell us precisely what must be measured, even when we cannot find a neat expression for the result. Some integrals resist every method we have devised further suggesting there is a rooted truth underneath. Is this merely a system we invented, or one we are gradually uncovering? The notation is ours, but the result does not appear to depend on what we call it. Perhaps the mathematical framework describes the structure of reality in a way that is absolute, and only the manner of describing it is ours.
And then the scale. It must have started with two rocks and three rocks, and objectively those are five rocks. From there we have discovered geometry, calculus, quantum physics, computers, artificial intelligence, and more. Somehow this ever-growing framework called mathematics keeps capturing reality without deviating from it, conforming back to its own roots, or so it seems.
Is mathematics divine, or god itself?
Calculus was invented only a couple hundred years ago. How did Newton even discover it? Newton and Leibniz arrived at it about ten years apart, both already indoctrinated in all the mathematics that came before them. A shared inheritance would explain the convergence, and so would a world that pushes back, and from inside the overlap the two cannot be told apart. Now widen the gap. If someone had reached a similar version hundreds or thousands of years earlier, working from a different toolkit, the coincidence would be much harder to blame on an interface, and the question might finally be answerable.
Mathematics is not a root of existence, yet it is not mere decoration. It is a constrained invention: a human interface that the world presses back against. That pressure separates mathematics from a story. A belief can be made absolute by decree. A theorem cannot be made false by one.
The test then travels. For all other abstractions, the frameworks of the mind, the useful question is not whether it was invented. It is what, if anything, pushes back.
One must aspire to see reality without its abstractions. The mind has been indoctrinated over time into forming an interface, and the task is to see through it. From childhood, we inherit distinctions we rarely seek to question: that truth is preferable to illusion, that certainty is preferable to doubt, that consistency is preferable to contradiction. We come to believe that to name something is to know it, that to explain something is to understand it, and that to distinguish is to discover a distinction that already exists in reality. These ideas gradually become so embedded that we cease to recognise them as ideas at all. The mind has been shaped by the very interface it must now attempt to see through. In fact the very belief that there exists a reality beneath our abstractions is itself an abstraction, another framework through which the mind attempts to make sense.
Yet one can get closer and closer to the ultimate possibility: a free mind, of clear vision, able to see reality for itself. Through awareness of social norms, of abstractions, and of the root beneath, one can learn to see reality. At the same time the interface cannot be rejected, for without it, even the simplest interactions with the tangible world become difficult to navigate. One must learn to interact without mistaking an interface for reality. Perhaps this is what a full and true life holds.