One of the most significant mathmaticians of the 20th centrury is a guy named Kurt Gödel'. What he's most famous for is his incpompleteness theorems. Now while a lot of what he talks about is in relation to systems that can describe numbers I think it holds true for trying to describe the universe also. I noticed a while back stephen hawkings was also considering this possibility (and his main focus is on a theory of everything).
Now, hopefully I haven't lost anyone yet :) Math is cool, its just most people don't study it long enough to find that out! anyways....
Taking a very simplistic look at the theory it basically states that given a set of "rules" that describe something then there is a true statement you can make thats not provable. You can add a new rule to prove the statement but that rule will just create another true statement thats not provable. (now this is very simplified and the rules must be capable of describing certain things....but...). I think this has interesting implications for philosophy. Namely, we can't come up with a philosophy thats completely provable!
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