As someone with a passing interest in the psychology of math, my sense is the whole concept badly needs a reset.
Epicycles were brilliant math, as a model of our view of the cosmos, but the conclusions drawn, crystalline spheres, were lousy physics, as explanation.
When the premises are wrong, all the shut up and calculate is just GIGO.
Consider cosmological theory;
If intergalactic space were to expand, the speed of the light crossing it should increase, in order to remain CONSTANT!!!
Instead, two metrics are being derived from the speed and spectrum of the same light. Given it is an expanding space and not tired light theory, the speed is still the Denominator!!!!
Then space-time itself:
As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our concept of time is as the present moving past to future. It is the basis of culture and civilization, as narrative and history, thus foundational to academia. Physics codifies it as measures of duration, to correlate with measures of distance.
Yet the evident reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is this presence, the events come and go.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is conserved, because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color and sound, as frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't confuse them with space, even though they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as sequence is to thought.
The present, as energy, goes past to future, because the patterns generated come and go, future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Suggesting consciousness manifests as energy.
The digestive system processes the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns, signals from the noise, with the circulation system as feedback in the middle.
It seems the more mathematically obsessed are convinced that the information is primary, but that is nonsense.
For one thing, any model is inherently finite, in order to be definitive. They break down over infinities. Too much information and the signal is lost back in the noise. Whiteout.
Which has lots of implications, such as in that presumed dimension of time, the future is not actually determined, as the act of determination can only occur as the present. In fact, the past cannot even be re-engineered, as so much information is lost. It is like a tapestry being woven of strands being pulled from what was woven.
There is no universal frame, map, model to incorporate all input, no omniscient omniscience, or TOE. It is bottom up.
Even the premise of God falls apart, as the ideal is not the absolute. The ideal is the locus of structure, the eye of the storm, the black hole at the center of the galaxy, the ideals, codes, creeds, heroes, narratives at the center of every culture.
While the universal is the elemental, so the absolute would be the essence from which we rise, not an ideal from which we fell. The light shining through the film, than the stories playing out on it.
I could go on, but I realize this is all too much outside the box thinking. I just want to make the point that you need to seriously look outside the box, before the pieces start to come together.
Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in. We are those dense little feedback loops in the middle.
The problem is the signals we extract from the noise are what resonates and synchronizes with our prior knowledge, so it becomes a self re-enforcing, centripetal feedback loop, that needs the occasional circuit breaker to sense where this particular focus, obsession might fit in some larger network. Mathematicians, religious fanatics and addicts tend to avoid breaking the circuit.
(One way light does apparently redshift over distance, is as multi spectrum packets, since the higher frequencies dissipate faster, but that would mean we are sampling a wave front and the quantification of light would be an artifact of its absorption and detection, a loading, or threshold theory, not fundamental to the light. Which would also not go over well with those who believe it's all only information, aka, statistics.)
