Paul,

The premise of platonic math(not my term) goes to the map versus territory debate, in that some(Tegmark comes to mind) propose that math is foundational and not merely descriptive. That there are these mathematical “ideal forms,” as the basis of reality.

For example, spacetime; Is space fundamentally three dimensional, or are three dimensions really just the xyz coordinate system and as such, a mapping device? Are longitude, latitude and altitude foundational to the biosphere of this planet, or are they just a mapping device?

How about time? Is there an actual dimension of time, such that we could time travel through wormholes in the “fabric of spacetime?”

Yet duration is a measurement of some particular action. Wouldn’t that make action foundational to duration? Much as action is foundational to temperature. As I keep pointing out, it is action which turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

This geometric description of time can’t even explain why it is asymmetric, other than reaching out to entropy. Yet what is being measured, action, is necessarily inertial. The earth only turns one direction. Entropy is a second order effect, like thermodynamics is to temperature.

There can be no physical dimension of time, simply because of causality and conservation of energy. The past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it. It is this changing configuration which creates time.

I could go on, but the point is the degree to which this mathematical description really has come to be viewed as foundational, rather than merely descriptive.

Then again, the reason for viewing time as linear is due to our faunal sequential perception and narrative culture, much as epicycles modeled our direct observation of space.

Which gets to the nature of “description.” As you point out, we can certainly describe, measure, define, etc. energy, yet these intellectual tools give us a static “description” of something which is inherently dynamic. Our minds just don’t do dynamic. It would be a whiteout, otherwise.

Which goes to the difference and relationship between what is static, the nouns, and what is dynamic, the verbs. As I also keep trying to point out, it is the process which generate the patterns. The process goes past to future, as these patterns rise and fall, future to past. Yet we are constantly trying to find that primal form, be it god, or a mathematical theory of everything.

Which does go to the relationship between the head and the heart, judgement and desire. Desire is what drives us, the process, while judgement defines our efforts, our attempt to order our reality. We are trying to put that final stamp on reality, but reality just keeps dissolving any effort to package and box it in. Maybe we need to consider the finite nature of the box.