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The math statement “2
+ 2 = 4” appears to be `true’ wherever we are and, so
far as we know, everywhere else in the Universe. Some folk might like
to think they can escape the growing scientific and technological consequences of mathematics,
but they invariably rely on these in their attempts to do so.
Anti-science religious extremists use bombs and bullets; gentler refugees like
the Amish of the U.S. have returned to earlier versions of technology.
Mathematics and the way of thinking behind it could probably only die
through a world-wide conflagration, and even then it would probably
rise again at some point in any new human history, though possibly not
for hundreds, even thousands, of years.
One might wonder what born-again scientists of that new era would make
of their archaeological finds, if anything of our world survives.
But this doesn’t have to be our future. Chances are we will
eventually find our way into Space. There can be no way of knowing what
that might be like until we arrive, though we now know a little. We
have seen other worlds out there; it seems unlikely that `life’, however
one might define it, is absent from them. And it also seems unlikely that
that Life wouldn't have a way
of life, a culture of some kind, perhaps even religions. The evolution
of cultures and religions have always been of scientific interest
to us, though even that would be secondary to the study of alien
science.
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