[EvaH (OP)]

Ryan asks:

What came first, the brain or consciousness? Are science and mathematics a limited way to know the universe in its entirety?

What do you think?

[alancalverd]

If you can define consciousness, I'll try to answer the first question - though you may find the answer obvious from your definition.

With respect to the second, science gives us a selfconsistent means of exploring the universe, recording our findings, and building mathematical models of what we find. However if the universe is infinite, or just bigger than the Schwarzchild radius, we can never know all of it, and it could be argued that since any new knowledge constitutes part of the universe, we then need to know what we know, which means there is no end to the quest. So whilst science and mathematics are not limited, our scientific knowledge will always be less than what there is to know. There are indeed larger and smaller infinities!

Of course if you want to know all about everything, you could take up philosophy and thus delude yourself that either you already know everything, or that you cannot know anything.

[yor_on]

Well Ryan, I would guess the brain needed to be there for consciousness and self awareness to develop. Mathematics is a way to structure knowledge in a logical fashion. It's very adaptive as long as the universe behave logically.

[alancalverd]

Or not! There's nothing logical about quantum mechanics, it just is. But mathematics gives us a very good description of how it is and what it does.

[hamdani yusuf]

Or not! There's nothing logical about quantum mechanics, it just is. But mathematics gives us a very good description of how it is and what it does.

Most parts of quantum mechanics are logical. Otherwise people won't be able to communicate about it effectively.
Some of its parts are giving us unexpected results, which means there must be some false assumptions have been made in drawing the conclusions.

[alancalverd]

The mathematical description is consistent, once you accept that charge, spin etc are quantised and that some concepts (particularly spin, charm, color....) do not have their everyday meaning. But there is no logic to the fact that these concepts are orthogonal and quantised - these things just are.