This is the continuation of a that got a little muddled by a couple of guys going back and forth without making much progress :-)

 

Does anyone thing there are ideas or beliefs rather that are believed, or at least adhered to by so many people that those ideas are considered "universal"?

 

Now "universal" is an absolute term and nothing I can think of is absolute.  This is one of the reasons I'm careful about using the word never or always.  If I use the word "never," I'm exaggerating.  Otherwise I'll say something like, "exceedingly rare" or highly unlikely.

 

Sometimes things that may have been "universal" in western culture in the past can, over time change.  Belief in the validity of gay marriage or the genetic inferiority of Black people are a couple of examples.

 

This is in contrast to changes in our understanding of facts like shape of the Earth.  People who believe the Earth is flat are simply ignorant. 

 

Whereas people can and will for sometime argue about whether marriage between same sex individual is "right", as it tears at the very fabric of all of the major religions.

Yes it is called mathematics. Mist fields are belief systems.

I guess for me I wouldn't put cultural mores in the same field as scientific opinion. Actually that is not consistent with what I said earlier.

I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with an idea that is prevelant enough to be considered universal but there are always cases where perversions and aberrations could be condoned by amoral cults and sociopaths, of which there are many in this world.  Delano says math,  and I'd go with music.  There are so many generes that there's something for everyone and the appeal of some form of music is universal.  

Maybe we should ignore sociopaths and those brainwashed by cults.  Sure there are many millions of these people -- perhaps billions but, in either case, they have mental defects from birth or through experience.

 

Now for the rest of us, I do believe mathematics is universal.  It can be used to communicate very clearly across cultures. There is an mathematical order to everything we do and patterns in everything we see -- even if they are too complex for us as individual to identify.

 

Music is just a creative expression of mathematics, harmonies, rhythms, frequencies, pitch.  There are patterns they "naturally" discordant and others that are soothing.  Even unsophisticated listeners can identify a singer who sings off key -- even if they don't have the language to articulate the problem -- they know it is just bad singing.

Actually some mathematicians thinks math is created much like art and is basically a fiction of the mind. You can search the philosophy of mathematics, embodied mind theory etc.

 

As for a s music you listing descriptors not expression. I am defining expression as essence. Music to me is an exprssion of a concept, thought or feeling. I am bot certain how those three items are different.

Both math and music are very creative forms of expression. 

 

As far as it being a art and mathematics being a "fiction of the mind" I have no idea what that means, but I have not read up on "embodied mind theory" maybe I'll look up a youtube video this evening...

Mathematics may be more if a symbolic language. That defines relationship. Interestingly enough some if the set theory people question whether math is s science.

If people who know nothing about each other or the experiments they are independently conducting come up with theories or formulae that jibe and reach the same conclusion, what does this prove?  That everything  we learn already exists and is just waiting to be discovered?  Could we also consider that without truth there are no facts?  And could we suggest that music is audible math??  And that the tooth fairy is god's second cousin???     

Scientific facts are useful. What is the point of life.

Audible math, I like the sound of it.

I am reading a book. Science, Religion and Myth and the shaping of Western Thought