All mathematics is produced by physical objects (brains, computers). Therefore the laws of physics determine what theorems are possible, and mathematics has no existence independent of our universe.
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Honestly, I just can’t make any sense of the claim. Surely the inverse square law (deeply mathematical, one supposes) was operative long before there were human brains or computers, right? How, then, could that math have been produced by brains or computers?
The square law is an approximation due to Newton. Gravity was there before. Math just describes it.
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Ahh! Now I think I’m seeing it. You’re thinking of math as just the stuff we write on the board, etc. Not whatever it is in virtue of which the stuff we write on the board is true or false.
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This makes some sense of the claim. But I’ll just report that it seems to me to make math much less interesting than I take it to be. I think, for example, that the universe is mathematical in an intriguingly discoverable way. I take it that you can’t say this.
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