We are in a position similar to that of a man who was provided with a bunch of keys and who, having to open several doors in succession, always hit on the right key on the first or second trial. He became skeptical concerning the uniqueness of the coordination between keys and doors.

The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.

The profound logical consistency of reality is nothing short of a miracle. However, I have less trouble than Wigner in believing that natural selection is capable of developing our reasoning capabilities to near perfection given a fundamentally consistent universe. Natural selection is clearly capable of creating beautifully complex and diverse creatures to inhabit the Earth and I see no reason it could not do the same for our reasoning capabilities. Our minds cannot comprehend the sheer magnitude of time that natural selection has had to do all it has done.

References: Wigner “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences”