Philosophy. Math. Writing. Believe it or not, these things are very similar. They all deal with, and transcend, our reality. And true reality. In ancient times, all the mathematicians were philosophers, and vice versa. Math and philosophy are closely related (well, the interesting kind of math. Not the toilsome in-class repetitiveness. I mean the theoretical kind…) and it makes for some very interesting thoughts.
What, you may ask, led me to this intriguing post? Actually, it was Math Circle last Wednesday, combined with a few of my own thoughts and some correlating thoughts from Ancient Greek philosophers presented by the Warnock Chair of Mathematics at the U who has the cool accent. What is math, anyway? It’s actually very hard to define, if you think about it. Physics is the study of why things happen, geography the study of the countries and cultures of the world, but what is math? The dictionary says that math is the study of the relationships among numbers, shapes, and quantities that uses signs, symbols, and proofs and includes arithmetic, algebra, calculus, geometry, and trigonometry. I think math is more than that. Here’s my definition of math: The study of the elements of the world that goes through and around ours, which are represented by numbers, and which we cannot touch save with our minds as an idea, yet which help to shape our reality. Because you see, people only got interested in numbers because they needed something to help them figure out the whys and hows of the world. And that’s where math comes from. But it really was…there, if you know what I mean. People just put…body to it, in our own minds, gave it shape and form. The theories we came up with for it are all part of our quest to understand reality and all that.
Which is why, you know, writing is closely tied to them as well. Every writer is a philosopher, for a writer must, for the time he’s writing, believe in things that mankind has yet to fathom. So they must create (or discover) the truth of the laws of reality, at least for the world they write, and we have only touched at that. Perhaps it’s because we’re not meant to know. Maybe we’re just not ready. And maybe we already do, and we just don’t recognize them for what they are. Because really, what do we know? Perhaps what we think we know is not really what is there. It’s been said that what we see with our eyes is not what is really there, and we are not capable of visualizing what really is. Isn’t that a thought to consider? I think it’s intriguing. Some other important person also said that man is facing a wall, and things happen behind him toward the mouth of the cave. We see shadows and think it’s reality, but reality is actually what’s behind us, making the shadows. We may know far less than we think we do, and there may be more things we have yet to know than we can ever imagine. We will learn what we can, and strive on harder, and brush against what we may. Such is the way of life.
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