Imagine you walk into a parking lot full of cars.

You have in your pocket one single key.

It's the key to your car.

The same key you've always used, the same key you've always trusted,

the same key that you always manage to realize that you've always used, the same key you've always trusted, the same key that

you always manage to realize that you've lost right before you're rushing out the door.

But have you ever had one of those moments when you walk up to the wrong car?

Maybe it's the same color, the same make and model, and it takes you a minute to realize

that something's off about the car.

And you stop yourself before you unlock the door and get in.

But what if your key unlocked that other car?

That'd be kind of weird, right?

What are the chances that your key specifically designed for your car and your car alone

just somehow, by sheer coincidence, unlocked a car very similar to, but

not exactly yours. What if you kept going? What if you tried your key on the next car?

And the next, in the next. What if your one key unlocked every single car in the parking lot. It seemed like magic, wouldn't it?

In 1960, the physicist Eugene Vigner penned in an essay, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

in the natural sciences. In it, he laid out how in the four centuries of scientific exploration

of the universe, ever since the days of Galileo, math has been really, really good at doing the

job. He said, quote, the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the

formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful

gift, which we neither understand nor deserve.

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