I went back to university after ten years out being a hippie photographer, and got a degree in comp sci. I don't have serious math chops, but I did three years of reasonable math courses so I can maybe tell a ring from a vector space 
But that was all 30 years ago. My forte seems to be the ability to form mental images of complex abstract ideas and use them as models for reality. It has something to do with the lef-brain/right-brain combination of being both an artist and a software designer. I remember in first year "getting" what a computer's inner world looked like, what it felt like to be an ALU or a memory bus. It's a very heady feeling. I spent the next 20 years doing assembly language programming as a result.
I tend to be more intuitive than formal in my thinking, though, which is where I can run into communication problems with people who are formalists. I don't mind if my ideas get a little loose around the edges so long as they fully express the core of the idea, and that can drive formalists crazy. That's why I have a sense of caution about heading into the project of using thermodynamics to explain the universal origins of form, the evolution of life and the structure of human civilization.
I haven't let it all hang out here on DU, but with my latest insight this idea has truly become a "temple worthy of living in". It has clarified into such a beautiful, elegant, parsimonious framework that I have to tell its story. So a math-free book on the idea is now in the works. I take a lot of heart from Rod Swenson's writing. He's been able to do much of this without using any heavy-lifting math, just word pictures and illustrative examples.
We'll see where the next year of writing leads, but with this as a jumping off point it promises to hold some magic.
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