@dalehileman,
Quote:...and not some other way?
Long time ago, in a discussion, one participant stated that any alien being from another planet visiting us must use mathematics for inventing machines in order to travel throughout space.
For him, there was no other way: numbers rule.
It happens that there are people who won't see numbers as numbers but as colors. They are capable to solve mathematical operations as fast as a computer. They can even use their way of interpreting quantities as they do with letters, and are capable of learning other languages very fluently.
With the existence of these people, who mix quantities as colors in their mind, the idea that numerical mathematics is the only way to reach a great technology is practically challenged and demonstrated as false.
If all humans were capable to interpret quantities as if they were mixed colors and solve complicated operations in seconds using the brain, perhaps we should be more advanced than we are today.
This is an example where the possibility that the universe "the way we see it" might be way different if we can perceive it in a different way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet
Tammet has been studied repeatedly by researchers in Britain and the United States, and has been the subject of several peer-reviewed scientific papers. Professor Allan Snyder at the Australian National University has said of him: "Savants can't usually tell us how they do what they do. It just comes to them. Daniel can describe what he sees in his head. That's why he's exciting. He could be the 'Rosetta Stone'."
In his mind, Tammet says, each positive integer up to 10,000 has its own unique shape, colour, texture and feel. He has described his visual image of 289 as particularly ugly, 333 as particularly attractive, and pi, though not an integer, as beautiful. The number 6 apparently has no distinct image yet what he describes as an almost small nothingness, opposite to the number 9 which he calls large, towering, and quite intimidating. He also describes the number 117 as "a handsome number. It's tall, it's a lanky number, a little bit wobbly". In his memoir, he describes experiencing a synaesthetic and emotional response for numbers and words.
He holds the European record for reciting pi from memory to 22,514 digits in five hours and nine minutes on 14 March 2004. He revealed in a French talk show on Radio Classique on 29 April 2016, that this event was the inspiration behind Kate Bush's song 'Pi' from her album Aerial.
He is a polyglot. In Born on a Blue Day, he writes that he knows ten languages: English, Finnish, French, German, Lithuanian, Esperanto, Spanish, Romanian, Icelandic, and Welsh. In Embracing the Wide Sky, he writes that he learned conversational Icelandic in a week and then appeared on an interview on Kastljós on RÚV speaking the language.
Perhaps things in the universe exist in some other way, but our nature can perceive it solely in one or two of the ways.
At the end, we will end with conjectures alone, because we will be with lack of evidence to prove the existence of other ways , due to our condition of perceiving the universe.
