Thanks. That's well said, regarding math's lack of ambiguity and hyperconsistency.

That concept of a field's "maturity" is an interesting one. If math is game-like and self-referential (restricted by stipulative definitions), a mature field would likewise have to lose touch with reality in some sense. Only that preoccupation with internal coherence, and in the extreme case only sufficient collective narcissism would support a potential replacement of natural processes with artificial ones via technological applications of the mature theories.

The article makes a slightly different point about the relevance of art, religion, and natural language. Those more comforting pursuits project our social mentality and thus presume the referent is personal. Scientists suspect their artificial languages are more realistic because they're coldly anti-social and devoid of social connotations.

The arts presume the world is personal and social, whereas the sciences and engineering fields transform impersonal nature into an artificial, meaning-filled, humanized domain. That's the ironic relationship of the two academic cultures, which I'll be writing more about soon.