The Natural Language of the Cosmos

Some scientists think this is cool,

Very cool, that multiple species

Across widely divergent lineages

Have separately evolved numerosity,

In some cases even showing signs

Of a rudimentary grasp of emptiness,

Zero, arithmetic, and the number line.

How wonderful to know others

Speak the language of nature!

Why would a tendency to organize

Magnitude from left to right, found

In birds as well as humans, just as

On the number line, be a part

Of nature’s own language? No one

Seems to go that far. Ascending

Numerosity from left to right may just

Be something within some brains.

Would the null set, then, be nature’s?

What of numbers themselves?

What makes math the language

Of the cosmos, other than languages

That say so? It fits. It works.

And what are fit and work? Prediction

And a bit of control thanks to same.

Alright, it is cool, very cool, that

Multiple taxa long separated

Use some of the same tricks to count,

And coolest is the core trick of likeness,

Of interpreting different but similar items

As quantifiable repetitions of the same.

If that abstraction of likeness is a trick

Common to many forms of life,

It’s a good one. Whether or not

It tells life something intrinsic about

Cosmic conversation, that’s different.

Math predicts better than any other

Way yet known of parsing memories,

Organic or prosthetic, of the past.

But the past may have more tricks

Than that, more than even math has

Dreamt of—and as for numbers, lines,

And nulls, do they converse or parrot?