Philosophy, Math, Writing, and Knowledge

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.

Festive Occasions

Today is October 25, meaning I have two soon-to-arrive occasions to mention. First of all, as many of you may know due to me spouting it worriedly for about two weeks, my older brother is going to be of-age in 5 days. The second of-age. Or the third, counting driving age. (Forgive this mode of talking about reaching age limits; I made up a full system of turning of-ages this morning for my story.) Don’t you think it’s interesting how age matters so much to us? I do. We allow young people to subsequently drive, vote, and have the choice to smoke and drink by age, even though some mature earlier and some much, much later. But what can we do about it? There has to be some way of judging adequacy, correct?


And then there’s the little bit about how adults generally think their intellect is superior to that of young people. No matter that I’ve heard some really ridiculous things out of adults and some very sound things out of kids/teenagers. I happen to think it’s nice that we can be idealist and dream about things that adults dismiss as impossible because they’re too weighed down with all the responsibilities of being adults. Now if the knowledge/experience of the adults could be combined with the idealism of youth…that might produce something productive, wouldn’t you say?

So that’s my small bit of age-talk for today, disregarding the fact that when your only sibling starts to pass milestones you should be very, very worried.

Now, the next occasion is Halloween. I once heard a Brit say that they thought it was strange that kids would go to strangers’ houses and ask for candy and that it sounded like an Americanized form of begging. Did you ever think about how people from far off might think our traditions were totally crazy? I mean, I take Halloween as a fact of October, but apparently that’s not so.

Well, personally I enjoy Halloween, because the candy aspect makes it much easier to forget Halloween is like…a…death…holiday…thing. And it’s nice when you’re little to go around for a night pretending you’re a princess or a Jedi or a ninja dude or a cat. Rudiments of acting, eh? And it feels good to give candy out and make some small child happy. Plus if you know your neighbors it isn’t really to strangers.

On the other hand, when you’re older and you don’t go trick-or-treating and you don’t stay at home handing out candy, what are you to do? It becomes less of a holiday and more of a sit-around-and-be-bored-and-scare-small-children sort of a day. This totally removes the point of it, for the small children at least.

Be as that may, back to the traditions topic. I for one may be going over to the other side of the world over Winter Break. They don’t celebrate Christmas over there! I don’t even know if there’ll be snow! And certainly no Christmas tree, and no fancy-wrapped presents, and no music on the radio. It makes you think about other traditions we don’t know about and how people over the world think our celebrations are weird and us not having some of their holidays is sad. We don’t even know a lot about other people, even in our own countries (I’ve heard some strange things about a certain universal topic for people from our state from people out-of-state). We need to raise cultural awareness so we can be more easily accepting and understand why people have these traditions. I’m opting for a culture class, not just one language with culture (for instance, I take French). I think it would help us all a lot, worldwide. Isn’t that what we want, peace and understanding?



A note to my poor readers…My blog seems to be for thought-producing-exploring purposes. As such, only a few have been really well organized. I apologize for that…I will try to do better in the future.

Positivity

When faced with much pressure and much to worry about, one wonders how one can hold on to some measure of positivity. And one must also reconcile oneself to the fact that positivity is rather necessary. Without it, how could we ever get things done? It would be a world of grim staring at all the things we have to confront in daily life. I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say they’re quite a bit to handle, if you really truly think about it all as a great clump. And sometimes it’s hard to pry oneself away from thinking of it as a great big suffocating clump about to descend on you.


Goodness, that’s very optimistic of me, isn’t it? Breathe deeply…think of it one at a time. And even then sometimes you can’t get it all done. I both dislike and enjoy procrastinating, but as it piles up it’s hard not to just sit there staring at it, like Psyche with the multitude of grains that Venus told her to sort.

All right, enough of being miserable. I will try to be positive. I’ve heard it works nicely, actually. A friend of mine and I have been practicing it abundantly, and I suspect we will be doing so through May, with extra intensity at the end of March. Positivity can make for determination, as well. We’re convinced we’re going to do well, so we are determined to do well (and to ensure the rest of the team does as well so we can achieve our goal). I suspect it’s part of the reason why being positive works so well.

Oh, and what about positive vibes being catching? I wonder if it works if you just think it, or if you have to say and act positively. That would be an interesting experiment, I think. It’s quite obvious it would work if you went around smiling brightly and convincing everyone it would be great, I think. People start to catch it; if you smile enough at someone they’ll smile back, unless they’re really horrible or you’re playing that one game involving not smiling. But you know, just the brain? There are so many, many things we have yet to learn about involving the human brain. So much intriguing mystery. There’s another question for you; how many long years until we know even twice as much as we do now? I notice that every time we seem to solve something, it simply raises more questions. Including now, when I’m just thinking a little. Already there are 5 question marks in this one post.

And there, yet again, let’s be positive. Maybe it won’t be so long. Maybe we will find out things much quicker. Yes…that’s right…be positive……………………………………….



Okay, so pardon for that totally ridiculous and not-making-much-sense post. My brain seems to run in circles around me; I think it can feel the anticipation for the SO year building. Though I sound quite ridiculous, I do indeed mean to be positive. This year will be our year. I promise it.

A Hodgepodge of Something More Mundane

After a few weeks of high and lofty topics, I decided to tone it down a bit this week (actually it was because I didn’t have any amazing revelations this week, but…) and talk about more mundane things. A summary of important things, I guess.
First of all, for instance, I finally overcame my writer’s block for real. I wrote 3 pages today at various times in school, which is rather impressive for me I think. I’m bursting with ideas and I think they’ll last another few chapters. I hope. I’ll probably get bogged down again around the time they reach a city, but oh well. Maybe my luck will hold! Dovie’andi se tovya sagain—It’s time to Roll the Dice. That’s the motto of Shen an Calhar, or the Band of the Red Hand, led by Matrim Cauthon, in the Wheel of Time. I just think it’s snazzy.
Secondly, I’m in rather a bit of a dilemma at the moment. I’m sure all of you know how many things I’m involved in. Well, there’s a certain organization that wants me on their team, and I was considering it earlier in the year until a certain other that takes higher priority said I couldn’t be on both. Well, recently, I was informed by an important person that if I did want to be on the first-mentioned organization, something could be worked out with the second-mentioned one. The thing is, because I was told I couldn’t be on it, I decided to do a certain other thing, which conflicts with this team. And I’m sort of worried about exploding from stress. Most of all I hate having to decide like this, because I was on the team last year and so I do feel loyalty toward it. Lastly, I’m kind of worried about the voices asking why I get an exception. I guess, looking at it, there are more arguments against it than for it. Ah well, I’ll decide this weekend and hope for the best.
Hmmm….what else of interest? I’m rereading a large series of books right now, in preparation for the release of the next one on October 27. As you may know, I make a rather big deal of them. I think they’re helping me with my writer’s block as well. When you can look at a book, see how a master can begin the series, each book, have climaxes for each book, manage characters, change the characters (even if the changes make me sad…I don’t like Rand being so hard), end books and chapters, switch between characters, places, and points of view, and end the series (though this one of course is not there yet), it helps very much indeed. I’d advise anyone trying to write to read thoroughly and then try and get things from it. Not just themes and truths of life and all, but about writing and little tricks and tips. There are quite a lot of them once you start looking.
I guess that about sums up my thoughts at the current moment, disregarding the bit about me being ecstatic at not having a boatload of math homework over the weekend and glad I don’t have much from other classes as well. I’m in a conflicting state of mind right now, I guess. Happy and sad and confused and thoughtful. And with some very interesting dreams to go along with it. That’s life, I guess. Fraught with so many things.

Musings on Writing and Reality

As enigmatic as the title seems, it’s really not so bad. What I mean is that this post will be one of perhaps several collections of thoughts, probably slightly disjointed, and maybe not getting anywhere much. As the title suggests, this one will be some thoughts I had about writing and reality. Warning to readers: It’s going to be rather hypothetical. You’ll see what I mean by that. Well, if you’re ready (or have quit reading already, whichever it might be), here goes…


First of all, a bit of thought on writing. I myself am writing a novel, I guess, and was recently in a bit of a block on about page 32 over a battle scene. I’d been thinking about what I wanted to happen and I realized something about the style of writing, or what was being told, wasn’t quite right, or didn’t give the right feeling away. I thought about it for a while, and then just as I was reading my book (I’m on the Wheel of Time series right now, excellent series everyone, you should read it), I think I figured out what was wrong. They always tell you, “Show, don’t tell.” Oh, I’d been having a lot of detail and all, but as I was reading I realized the more effective method that Jordan uses. He tells everything from the character’s point of view, even though it’s written in 3rd person. Something about showing emotions and reactions the way that character sees it and feels it gives some more life to the thing, and more reality to the people. That’s what I’d been doing wrong—I’d been writing more from an outside perspective, as a bystander would see it, and trying to communicate emotion by expression and how the people said things. While that is effective at times, somehow just showing how one person sees, and feels, and the reasons for their actions, gives a depth and reality to it that can’t be paralleled by simply telling how it looks.

And, of course, fiction needs to seem so much like reality that you can’t tell it much apart, or it should in my perspective. I say this for two reasons. The first is that I read fiction pretty much just to get away from RL. To read about a different place, a different time, a different world, to lose myself in it, is the purpose of this pastime. Maybe I’m a bit too daydreamy, but that’s the way it goes. The day I stop would be the day I find answers, or finally settle down in life, I guess. Maybe.

The second reason is something a little harder to understand, even for me. (It’s where the “hypothetical” comes in.) I always like to think of the worlds in books as real, in a way. Untouchable except through books, and authors and their writings the link between, and the authors historians rather than imaginers. Only perhaps these worlds don’t exist until they think of them, but once they do they are fully fleshed, and the people, and then suddenly it’s real and the author can only gaze down and wait for things to unfold. That would be an interesting explanation for all those times when authors say they didn’t know who was going to die only then when it happened they knew that was how it had to be. And then how long the world lives depends on how many people believe in it, or at least are drawn to it. The thing is, we never really have any way to prove anything. Apart from our senses and what we communicate with each other, and who’s to say our senses aren’t lying? And what does it mean to be real—and how can we even know the world we live in is real the way we think it is?

I guess I shouldn’t branch out so much to create strange paradoxes. It’s just entrancing to think that there’s something more out there than what we see. Likely all of this is just fancy, but it’s nice to think, what if? At times. And indeed, what if? There is so much we still do not know about, well, everything, and so it will be for a long time, I think. When the world still holds so many secrets, why not let your daydreaming run wild? It is part of what makes us human, after all. We have done it for thousands of years. Remember not to fall so far from our beginnings that you lose your wonder. As was once said, “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean.” Let your dreams run.