Is mathematics good enough to describe everything?

Let me start with a confession: I once spent a very long evening trying to write down everything.

Not everything I did that day. Everything. The whole thing. All of it. I got as far as the letter E before I realized I was going to need a bigger notebook and possibly a different species of brain.

So I did what any reasonable person does when the universe won't fit in a notebook. I switched to symbols.

Step 1: Define Everything

Everything (E) = all things.

There. Done. Notice how much easier that was than actually listing them. This is the central magic trick of mathematics: you take an infinite, screaming, incomprehensible mess and you put a single italic letter in front of it, and suddenly it's manageable. It fits on a napkin. You can carry it in your pocket.

You have not understood it. But you have contained it, which in academia counts as roughly the same thing and pays considerably better.

Step 2: Define the tool

Mathematics (M) = the language of physics.

Physicists love saying this. They say it in the same tone a man uses when describing his lawnmower. She's a good machine. Never let me down.

And it's true, math is a magnificent language. It has verbs, it has grammar, it has a terrifyingly small vocabulary for feelings. You can describe a collapsing star in it. You can describe the curvature of spacetime near a black hole. You can describe seventeen dimensions you will never visit and cannot picture and would not enjoy.

What you cannot do is describe why you find any of this interesting.

Hold that thought. It's going to become a problem.

Step 3: Define the authority

Physics (P) = the mother of all sciences.

I want to be clear that physics did not choose this title. Physics was given this title by physicists, which is a bit like being voted Most Handsome by a committee consisting entirely of yourself.

But we'll allow it. Physics has earned some swagger. It has, at minimum, correctly predicted the behavior of things that have absolutely no business being predictable.

Step 4: Define the problem

Mind = E + M + P + Q

And here is where the whole beautiful machine coughs, sputters, and rolls quietly into a ditch.

Q is the unknown. Q is the problem of mind. Q is that little curl of something at the center of your skull that is, right now, reading a blog post about whether it exists.

Physics has no equation for Q. Mathematics has no notation for Q. We have tried. We have tried very hard. We have built enormous machines and pointed them at brains, and we have learned an astonishing amount about which parts of the brain light up when you look at a photograph of a sandwich.

And precisely nothing about why there is someone home to see the sandwich.

You can describe every neuron. Every ion channel. Every millivolt across every membrane. Congratulations: you have described a very wet, very complicated three pound machine, in perfect detail, from the outside, forever.

The lights being on is not in the description. The lights being on has never once been in the description.

The Conclusion

Physical theory of everything = theory of "everything except mind."

Which is a fantastic product name, honestly. I'd love to see the box.

THEORY OF EVERYTHING
Now describing 99.9% of all known reality!
Does not include: the thing doing the describing.
Sold as is. No refunds. Batteries not included. Observer not included.

And since "mind" is doing a suspicious amount of heavy lifting in words like describe, understand, know, and theory, since every single one of those verbs requires a Q to perform them, the honest conclusion is:

Nothing is good enough to describe anything at all.

The Part Where I Shoot Myself in the Foot

Now.

You're not going to agree with me. And I know exactly why you're not going to agree with me.

It's because I just proved that mathematics can't describe everything by writing four equations.

I numbered them. I used a plus sign. I defined my variables. I did a little E + M + P + Q like a man who has never once doubted arithmetic in his life. I built my entire case against the toolbox using the toolbox, and then set the toolbox on fire while standing inside it, and I want full credit for the flames.

This is not a flaw in my argument. This is the argument wearing a little hat.

Because that's the trap, isn't it? There's no outside. You cannot step out of your mind to check whether your mind is describable, using a language your mind invented, evaluated by a mind, for the satisfaction of a mind. Every instrument in the lab is made of the thing we're trying to measure.

It's turtles all the way down, except the turtles are self aware, and one of them is writing this, and one of them is reading it, and neither of us can prove the other one is a turtle.

So What Do We Do?

We keep doing the math. Obviously.

Not because it describes everything. It doesn't. But because it's the best hammer we've got, and the universe, whatever it is, whatever we are, has turned out to be surprisingly nail shaped for a surprisingly long time.

And when the hammer finally hits Q and bounces off with an embarrassing bonk, we'll do what we've always done:

We'll write a paper about the bonk. We'll put a Greek letter on it. We'll call it a field.

And somewhere behind all of it, quietly, unmeasured, unnotated, and entirely unaccounted for, something will find that funny.

That's Q.

That's the whole problem.

The Conclusion, Properly

So here it is, the summary of roughly two thousand years of philosophy and one very long evening with a notebook:

Everything = describable.
Mind = not describable.
Mind = the thing doing the describing.

Therefore: nothing is good enough to describe anything at all.

I have proved this. With equations. Which are made of mathematics. Which is the thing I just proved doesn't work.

I would like to see a physicist try that at a conference.

And look, I know how this ends. You're going to close this tab and think well that's clever but it's obviously wrong, and you're going to be unable to say exactly why, and it's going to bother you in the shower tomorrow morning. That's not me winning the argument. That's just Q, being annoying, on schedule.

So I'll say it before you do:

"And I know, you are not agree with this answer, because the explanation is carried out using mathematics ____ :)"