Essay Abstract
Why does the glove of mathematics fit the hand of physics so well? Is there a good reason for the good fit? Does it have anything to do with the mystery number of physics or the Fibonacci series and the golden ratio? Is there a connection between this mystery number and the question, why is there something (one) rather than nothing (zero)? The acclaimed mathematician G.H. Hardy (1877-1947) once observed: "In great mathematics there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy." Is this also true of great physics? If so, is there a simple "pre-established harmony" between their ultimate foundations? The seventeenth-century philosopher-mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz, who coined this phrase, believed that he had found that common foundation in calculus, a methodology he independently discovered with Isaac Newton. But what is the source of the harmonic series of the natural log that is the basis of the calculus? This essay is an answer to Leibniz's quest and questions in the light of subsequent discoveries in mathematics and physics.
Author Bio
I have degrees in philosophy from Stanford (B.A.) and Northwestern (M.A. and Ph.D.) and was a Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University. After publishing dozens of papers in philosophy I became fascinated by the "holy grail of mathematics," the unproven Riemann Hypothesis, because of its beautiful harmony. In 2008 the "Journal of Interdisciplinary Mathematics" published my proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, and in 2010 it published my disproof of the related Birch/Swinnerton-Dyer Conjecture. Both papers have been posted (e-published) online by Taylor and Francis Publishing Group in 2013 and are available at http:www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09720502.2008.10700605.