Fwd: News: Without maths we’re lost in a dark labyrinth
Roger Bagula
<stonjek@...> wrote:
Without maths we’re lost in a dark labyrinth | Marcus du Sautoy -
Times Online
It’s the glue that binds scientific and artistic cultures. The
language of number and symmetry is spoken everywhere
Marcus du Sautoy
November 26, 2009
When I was a kid I hadn’t wanted to be a mathematician at all. My
dream had been to become a spy. This ambition was fuelled by too many
visits to see Roger Moore playing 007 at our local cinema combined
with the misconception that my mum, who was once in the diplomatic
corps, had been a spy. To realise my dream I decided I would follow in
my mum’s footsteps and join the Foreign Office.
Speaking foreign languages seemed to be the key to fulfilling my
dream, so when I went to secondary school I signed up for all the
languages my school taught. It did French and German. It was one of
the few comprehensive schools still teaching Latin. There was a course
on the BBC teaching Russian. Being a boy of the Cold War I thought
that was an ideal language for anyone dreaming to become a spy. So I
got my French teacher to help me with Russian.
But as I battled away with these languages I became increasingly
frustrated with the illogical spellings, the endless irregular verbs
that didn’t make any sense and which you just had to learn. I’ve
always had a terrible memory and yearned for a sense of order and
logic.
At the height of this crisis my maths teacher pulled me aside. Almost
conspiratorially he let on that the maths we were doing in the
classroom wasn’t really what mathematics was about and he suggested a
few books that he thought might open up the real world of mathematics
to me. One of the books was called The Language of Mathematics. I was
intrigued. I’d never thought of mathematics as a language. As I read
further through the book I realised that this was the language I’d
been hankering after.
First, it didn’t seem to have any irregular verbs. Everything made
logical sense, evolving naturally from a few natural assumptions.
That’s not to say that there weren’t surprising twists and turns
throughout the story, but they all made sense. The most exciting
discovery was the power of this language to describe the natural
world. It had the power to reveal where it had all come from but, more
excitingly, to predict what will happen next: for example, to make
sense of what is happening (or almost happening) in the Large Hadron
Collider, which uses the mathematics of strange symmetrical objects in
hyperspace. To assess the potential effect of travel restrictions or
vaccinations on the spread of the H1N1 virus requires mathematical
modelling. And climate change is a mathematical problem: it’s only by
understanding the delicate mathematical relationship between different
factors in the environment that we can understand why temperatures are
rising.
Mathematics brings a transparency to these complex systems. But it
isn’t only the scientists who are speaking this language. It is
extraordinary how many interesting mathematical ideas one can find
bubbling beneath the surface of the work of many artists. Either
consciously or subconsciously they are drawn to the same mathematical
structures that fascinate me.
Messiaen consciously exploited the asynchronicity of the prime numbers
17 and 29 to create a sense of timelessness in the Quartet for the End
of Time. In another piece, Île de Feu, I cannot believe he was aware
that the two twelve-note sequences he uses are the basis for
generating one of the strangest symmetrical objects discovered by
mathematicians in our mathematical journey through symmetry. But it is
a sensitivity to similar structures that drew him to these two themes.
From the magnificence of the Baroque to the modern architecture of
Arup, Foster and Hadid, one can find complex mathematical curves
running through the buildings that surround us. The writing of Borges
is infused with a fascination with infinity and the nature of space.
With mathematics acting like a glue binding all these different
scientific and artistic cultures together I believe that mathematics
provides a perfect platform for my job as the new Simonyi Professor
for the Public Understanding of Science, which I have held for a year.
In some strange sense I have found myself realising my dream to join
the Foreign Office. I see my role rather like an ambassador for the
often alien world of science, trying to provide bridges for a society
that is sometimes suspicious of this powerful territory.
Given how much scientific and technological developments permeate
modern life, it is essential that society understands what is
happening in our world. The Jenkins report in 2000 identified that
more dialogue was needed between the scientific community and society.
But I believe one can only have genuine dialogue if you’ve got
understanding. How can you have a debate about stem-cell research if
you don’t understand what a stem cell is? That’s not to say that the
scientists know all the answers. Many of the interactions between
science and society need input from many different perspectives.
Scientific research is key to understanding the relative dangers of
different drugs but scientists need to understand that drugs are not
purely a scientific question, that there is a social and political
dimension. But without the understanding of the science, this debate
doesn’t get going.
The challenging thing for me is that science is not just a single
country. It is a continent full of very different cultures. I was out
of my depth when I was phoned up by a news channel to explain on the
spot the work of the Nobel Prize for Medicine announced that morning.
By the following day I’d talked to colleagues enough to download in my
Sexy Science column the essence of how telomeres protect chromosomes
as they divide and multiply. Just imagine a professorship for the
Public Understanding of the Humanities who had to represent everything
from philosophy to medieval painting, from South American literature
to the music of the Baroque.
It is one of my aspirations during the tenure of my professorship to
encourage government, research councils and universities that the more
scientific ambassadors we can support the better chance we have of
integrating the foreign world of science with the rest of society.
Without an understanding of the language of science and mathematics,
as Galileo once wrote, we will all be wandering around lost in a dark
labyrinth.
From Marcus du Sautoy’s inaugural lecture as the Simonyi Professor for
the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.
Source: Times Online
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6932402.ece
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek
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