A Mathematician's Lament

[marvenger]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

well i think losing the anger means you don't bleed, you can still see and point out but it doesn't mean you're bleeding.

[cjppjc]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

well i think losing the anger means you don't bleed, you can still see and point out but it doesn't mean you're bleeding.

Of course you are right. I did not mean to insult you with the word bleed. In retrospect it was a poor choice of words. This is a math thread. There is a theory that says all real effort is rewarded. It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics.

[marvenger]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

maths is about measurement. what and why you're measuring and what your references are are extremely important. I have huge faith in the scientific method, but believe that the profit motive gets in the way of its potential, maybe eventally more people will see it like this and something like human rights can take the profit motive's place in colouring the application of the scientific method.

[Sharky]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

I beg to differ. The beauty of mathematics is in the form of its theorems, axioms and formuli.

While I agree that there is beauty in those things, I don't think that's the only beauty in mathematics.

In fact, that's like saying the beauty of a painting is in the chemicals that make up the paint. Sure, it's beautiful on one level. But if you look too deep, you miss the bigger picture.

For me (as a life-long student of math), the beauty is all around us; it's in the ability to connect meaningful numbers, formulae and theorems to the things that we experience in everyday life. I see numbers everywhere I look. Even if I don't know a particular formula, the idea that there probably is one is a wondrous thing.

Math is the cornerstone of man's ability to see, understand and ultimately control the universe around him.

Abstract math is beautiful in the same way as abstract art: it's wonderful that something so fantastic can be created only from nothing but human ingenuity.

[swgprop]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

I am glad to hear you have been able to lose some of your anger. It is a useless emotion.

Anger with no outlet is worse than useless.

Anger, channeled and focused, can be energizing, inspiring, motivating.

At least I've found it such.

[marvenger]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

agree, i think thats why its there, its a motivator, but its a primitive one and can lead to a very narrow focus so you've got to very carefull with it and not lose the big picture, the truth of all realtionships out there.

I think Thoreau said well when he said the truth is always sublime, if you're too angry you're not seeing the truth.

[marvenger]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

here's the thoreau passage.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure.

[*T*]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

Why Organize a Universe this Way?

Thanks for introducing Rumi.

[cjppjc]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

Thanks for introducing Rumi.

You are welcome.

To me it is the last stanza is where the point is made. In alot of the threads here we see a level of frustration regarding the way the world works. All REAL change begins in the individual. Everything else is an illusion.

[btattoo]

Re: A Mathematician's Lament

Math as the greeks understood it had four seperate components but all of the one subject.

Arithmetic - the study of the nature of number

Geometry - the study of number in space

Music - the study of number in time

Astronomy - the study of number in space and time

When studied in this form rather then from just the straight jacket of thereoms, axioms, formuli and algebric equation, maths' beauty and artistry becomes self evident to hear and see imho.

well put - having students see it this way can encourage them to think of math as a context-dependent brand of inquiry. my students are often interested that the Egyptians, for example, used a formula to calculate hypotenuses, but didn't call it a theorem because they didn't care about "pure" math the way the greeks did. by "pure" I suppose I mean they (the Egyptians) didn't see math as having anything to do with metaphysics.