Describing Nature With Math

Extremely well, as Einstein knew better than most, of course. In fact, most scientists would agree that, when it comes to teasing out the inherent secrets of the universe, nothing visual, verbal, or aural comes close to matching the accuracy and economy, the power and elegance, and the inescapable truth of the mathematical.
 

How is this so? Well, for the math-challenged, for that person who has avoided anything but the most basic arithmetic since high school, who feels a pit in his stomach when he sees an equation—that is, for myself—I will attempt to explain, with the help of some who do mathematics for a living. If you're math-phobic, too, I think you'll get a painless feel for why even that master of describing nature with words, Thoreau, would hold that "the most distinct and beautiful statements of any truth must take at last the mathematical form."