The Final Ode to Mathematics
“While Mathematics makes the invisible visible, it also created the invisible universe we live in.”
“It takes mathematics to ‘see’ what keeps an airplane aloft… to ‘see’ radio waves… to ‘see’ the invisible forces…”
At the near end of the author’s preface, he argued that the universe has its own language… its own data, which can be considered as the explanation behind phenomena that are unexplainable if humans solely depend on their senses. We perceive the invisible forces that govern the earth’s rotation around the sun through Newton’s mechanics or radio waves through the equations of Maxwell. For the author, mathematics makes it possible to ‘see’ the invisible, including the universe we find ourselves in (Devlin, 2000).
Because of the progress that mathematics made for our world, the author pointed out that “it forms an invisible universe that supports much of our lives” (Devlin, 2000). However, in the eyes of the readers and in his way of sequencing his ideas, we are presented with a conclusion, supported by inconsistent details about the connection of real-life applications to the universe, that explicates the idea that mathematics was the sole, main contributor in understanding the mysteries of the universe, which I disagree as this forgets the significance of the scientific community to ‘creating’ the universe.
Mathematics is merely a tool to decipher the hidden data of the universe, and the ideas presented by mathematics are then utilized by the scientific community to observe, analyze and interpret in an attempt to understand the significance of such ideas to our existence and to our universe. (Penrose, 2004).
In retrospect, our Grade 12 Physics teacher always pointed out that we ought to understand the universe to know, at least, one truth in our lives. That said, the author should have been more clear in explaining the role of mathematics in understanding the universe.
On the other hand, I can somehow agree with the second clause of the thesis statement if only the author connected the discovery of the Julia set to the language of the universe. If that happened, we, readers, can reach a consensus where we may discern the truth, that is, the set was not a product of a human mind, but a product of the universe. Yes, it was found at a specific time, but the design was already existing before the discovery… maybe even before our existence (Penrose, 2004). Thus, we can conclude that it was an example of a datum made by Nature, and we, humans, perceive it through the lens that Mathematics has provided.
References:
Devlin, K. (2000). Prologue: What is mathematics? In The language of mathematics: Making the invisible visible (pp. 1–12). W.H. Freeman and Co.
Penrose, R. (2004). The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. Jonathan Cape
