A concept like this, entertained by mainstream physics, is problematic even as a metaphor, for it is postulating some sort of sacred text for reality (R). Beyond the obvious paradoxes -like the one that says that the set of postulates which conforms the theory would contain itself as a postulate- such Pythagorean proposal mistakes the model for the modelled thing. Theories are conceptual models, at best, consistent with their own principles, but not necessarily with our basic intuitions and conceptions (Lebenswelt). An example of this is the mathematical discipline of Analysis, whose foundations sustain the edifice of physics. The difference between the original and the model, something purportedly solved by the traditional platonic appeal to the imperfection of the human sphere in relation to the sphere of the gods, has been expressed in contemporary epistemology as the asymptotic approximation of our science to truth (or reality). But in relation to TE, their suppo...
On the symbolic constructions of human identity.