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Working Notes : Lakoff and Nunez: Where Mathematics Comes From: How the embodied mind brings mathematics into being

Lakoff , a linguist, and Nunez, a psychologist, take on the question of whether mathematics is discovered or invented. They convincingly argue that mathematics is a cognitive metaphor for qualities of the real world. The concept of "the embodied mind" fits well with my systems based view of the relationship of mind and world. It is a simple, pragmatic approach to how the abstract exists as emergent properties of the world.

Mathematics is true because the metaphor is directly mapped from the real world, a symbolic model of reality that can manipulated in the abstract to predict the behavior of the world to some extent. Of course precise prediction is possible only in the small set of linear problems. Non-linear systems become too complex to predict, bringing uncertainty and emergent properties even to the abstract realm of mathematics.