Mathematics As Religion (by Compasswallah)

transcript

Mathematics As Religionby Compasswallah at BITS, Pilani 2016

Twitter: @fadesingh

Some personal reminiscences

IIT KharagpurThe Impossible NozzleFoucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco

Mathematics As ReligionA talk by Compasswallah Twitter: @fadesingh

“That was when I saw the Pendulum.

The sphere, hanging from a long wire set into the ceiling of the choir, swayed back and forth with isochronal majesty.

I knew -- but anyone could have sensed it in the magic of that serene breathing -- that the period was governed by the square root of the length of the wire and by pi, that number which, however irrational to sublunar minds, through a higher rationality binds the circumference and diameter of all possible circles.

The time it took the sphere to swing from end to end was determined by an arcane conspiracy between the most timeless of measures: the singularity of the point of suspension, the duality of the plane's dimensions, the triadic beginning of pi, the secret quadratic nature of the root, and the unnumbered perfection of the circle itself.”Mathematics As

ReligionA talk by Compasswallah Twitter: @fadesingh

History of ScienceLiterature, science or theology?

“The Pendulum told me that, as everything moved -- earth, solar system, nebulae and black holes, all the children of the great cosmic expansion -- one single point stood still: a pivot, bolt, or hook around which the universe could move. And I was now taking part in that supreme experience. I, too, moved with the all, but I could see the One.....”

- Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum (1988)

What is Truth?Purity and Platonism, versus probabilityAnd engineering physics and science.

The Church Of GravityNewton believed that gravity was the will of God, he was a “medium”. Gravity as destroyerAnd protector both. The fate of comet Shoemaker-Levy...

Temples Of Geometry Samurai Japan and sangaku,science after the Meiji Resoration, The Saturnian rings of Hantaro Nagaoka

Temples Of Geometry

Yellamma Temple, Karnataka represents a fractal cosmology. What are fractals?

Photo: by Paul Prudencewww.dataisnature.com

Word Or Image?Kufic calligraphy, 7-9th century(??) Greek Geometry in the hands of the Islamic Golden Age, new tools and instruments,But the same text – the Koran.

Crystallography, magnetism and geometry In Islam. Mathematics As

Word And Image

Zoomorphic calligraphy, unknown artist

Meanwhile, the Renaissance in Europe is ready .

Opening Of A Universe

Negative numbers, negative roots. Caspar Wessel and others.

Imaginary numbers, how algebrabecame Geometrized.

Now symmetry can be applied to Algebra.

"The divine spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and non-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity.''

- Gottfriend Leibniz, circa 1673

Magic In Mathematics

Unexpected unity in theorems, Exceptional Objects as Miracles.

Magic In Mathematics

This magic square was created by Leonhard Euler (1707-1783). Each row and each column sum to 260. Each half-row and half-column sum to 130. The square is also a knight’s tour: a knight could visit each square on a chessboard exactly once by following the numbers in sequence.

The Rise Of Calculus

This manuscript page from 1665 shows a 23-year old Isaac Newton calculating the area under a hyperbola to 55 decimal places,By hand.

Problems with infinity.

Measuring InfinityIntegers and evens are equally infinite,Irrationals are a greater infinity.

Measuring Infinity

The Axiomatic God of GödelUnity and completeness in mathematics,Provable and unprovable conjectures. Examples thereof. Mathematics As

A Brief Story Of Polyhedra ...plate on the right fromMax Bruckner, "Vielecke und Vielflache" (Leipzig, 1900)

“If a ‘religion’ is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel has taught us that, not only is mathematics a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one.”

J.D. Barrow in Between Inner Space and Outer Space, Oxford University Press, 1999, p 88.

शुक्रीया!for coming...I'm @fadesingh on Twitter

http://compasswallah.tumblr.comCOMPASSWALLAH