This post continues a meditation on the nature of mathematics begun in Part I. It involves the perennial question about whether mathematics is invented or discovered, and consequently evokes questions about mathematical reality. This subject is probably of little interest to most people, and even most mathematicians. But the extremely heavy involvement of mathematics in the descriptions of quantum mechanics, and the even more mathematically abstruse excursions into ideas such as string theory in an effort to wed quantum mechanics to general relativity, force us to confront the central place mathematics has in “explaining” our physical reality. Of course, this essay has no definitive answers, and leaves the situation as a mystery.  See Meditation on “Is” in Mathematics II – Mathematical Reality.