Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place?

Home Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? Read Later Share Copied! Comments Read Later Read Later Qualia Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? By Natalie Wolchover March 4, 2026 Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math. Read Later Introduction “I ’ve spent a long time exploring the crystalline beauty of traditional mathematics, but now I’m feeling an urge to study something slightly more earthy,” John Baez wrote on his blog in 2011. An influential mathematical physicist who splits his time between the University of California, Riverside and the University of Edinburgh, Baez had grown increasingly concerned about the state of the planet, and he thought mathematicians could do something about it. Baez called for the development of new mathematics — he called it “green” math — to better capture the workings of Earth’s biosphere and climate. For his part, he sought to apply category theory, a highly abstract branch of math in which he is an expert, to modeling the natural world. It sounds like a pipe dream. Math works well at describing simple, isolated systems, but as we go from atoms to organisms to ecosystems, concise mathematical models typically become less effective. The systems are just too complex. But in the years since Baez’s post, more than 100 mathematicians have joined him as “applied category theorists” attempting to model a variety of real-world systems in a new way. Applied category theory now has an annual conference, an academic journal, and an institute, as well as a research program funded by the U.K. government. Skepticism abounds, however. “When I say we’re underdogs and nobody likes us, it’s not completely true, but it’s a bit true,” one applied category theorist, Matteo Capucci , told me. I set out to learn what this burgeoning research area is about. How could one of the seemingly most rarefied realms of pure math help demystify a system as complex as the bi...