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View submission: /r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | January 27, 2020
(1) Is the universe ultimately a mathematical model?
No, what we will find is ways of using mathematical structures in the description of the physical world. This doesn't mean that the physical world is a mathematical model, just that mathematical models can be good explanations of it.
(2) Why is mathematics so useful (has so vast and unparalleled application in quantitative fields, etc.)? Is it an accident or merely a matter of trial and error?
My guess is that this is a consequence of the reach of the language of mathematics as a theory. If you regard the whole of mathematics as a useful theory to describe reality, the numerous discoveries made in the field since it's invention, including it's applications in other fields of knowledge, are manifestations of the property of the initial theory that David Deutsch calls the "reach" of the theory. This is the amount of phenomena that a theory is able to describe, which is always indeterminate, since there is no guarantee that it won't be able to explain anything beyond what we know it can at any given moment.
There's nothing here!