Terror Of Math
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(Conspiracy Nation, 01/11/06)
-- "Hebrew is all math," Lenny tells Max Cohen in the incomparable film
"Pi." The Torah "is a string of numbers, sent to us by God."
During Europe's "Dark Ages," the lamp of learning burned
bright in Arabia Felix, home
of the "Arabic numerals."
Arabs and Jews battle fiercely, yet each group shares a noble
background in mathematics.
In ancient Greece, some had leisure time. They passed the
hours pondering mathematical riddles. There was no hurry. It was like
doing crossword puzzles. Math was fun.
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In the Middle Ages, the heliocentric theory displaced old ideas of
motion. Since the earth itself was in motion, that meant movement was
more complex. There was renewed interest in studies of motion.
One problem was how to figure out instantaneous motion. You have a
falling object, for example. The speed of the falling object
accelerates over time. What is the object's speed at 3.5 seconds?
3.5 seconds is a point in time. But a point has no dimension. If
speed equals 16 multiplied by time squared (s=16t^2), you might want to
plug-in 3.5 and get 196. But the instant happens so fast that no time
elapses, meaning "t" (time) is essentially zero.
What they did is, they figured, "Okay, then what value do we get
when 't' is 3.4 seconds?" What about when "t" is 3.49 seconds? 3.4999
seconds? They found that, as "t" approached the limit of 3.5 seconds, "s"
approached 196 feet per second.
"Well, so what?" some might say. What has this to do with "the real world"?
But what is "the real
world"? Native Americans considered the dream world to be the real
world and the "real world" to be the dream world. The Greeks had a
similar concept: the noumenal
world versus the phenomenal
world. As it turns out, the mathematical conceptions have a
great deal to do with the real world.
This question of calculating instantaneous motion is a large part of
what the dreaded calculus is
about. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz "did not complete the
calculus," writes Morris Kline (Calculus. ISBN:
0-486-40453-6). "In fact, it may be a comfort to students... to know
that Newton and Leibniz, two of the greatest mathematicians, did not
fully understand what they themselves had produced."
In mass production mode, students today are grinded out certified as
passing calculus. They are thrown into semesters and expected to
quickly understand what took the most brilliant minds ages to achieve.
There is no leisure in such studies, but rather tremendous pressure.
Students experience math as anxiety-producing agony. This is what they truly learn: to fear mathematics.
These math anxieties undergird everyday news events, such as the Abramoff affair. The Jack Abramoff
scandal is complex, as was the Watergate scandal. It is a mathematical problem suddenly
thrown in your face. Worsening the situation are dread-inducing news media,
who keep hinting new unknown factors are imminent to the equation. It
is like a math professor giving you a problem, and while you try to
solve it he insinuates he has secret
factors he now withholds. As you begin to figure the equation
out, the professor pounces upon you saying, "Ah-hah! But here is a new
factor!"
You can figure anything out, given time. You can even
figure out the Abramoff affair, except they keep jostling you. They
jostle you because, in point of fact, they do not want you to figure out the
Abramoff affair.
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Conspiracy Nation
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