Where in the world would we be without math? What if we lived in a universe that was too random to explain? Aren’t we lucky to have a way to navigate the stars, tell time, use a map, follow a cooking recipe, obey the speed limit, act our age, count our money and figure out how far we are from the Sun?
What is math, anyway? Is it a human-created invention or is it the secret formula to the Universe? Could it be what Galileo called the “language of God?” These questions have been debated through ancient and modern times by the brightest minds that have ever lived. But, alas, like classrooms full of grade school students, these great thinkers all remain “stumped.”
Which came first: man or math? Nobody knows, but what cannot be disputed is the central value of mathematics to all of our human civilizations. Without math there would be no Stonehenge (2300 BCE) or Egyptian pyramids, or any of the other original Wonders of the World. Christopher Columbus and other explorers could not have navigated the seas without Archimedes’ system of numbers and star charts he called astronomy. NASA could not have put a man on the Moon without computers full of “hidden figures.” (See the 2016 movie, “Hidden Figures” for further appreciation of celestial numerals.)
There would be almost no “truths” in our world today if there were no numbers, patterns, formulas, forms or calculations. Mathematics is essential to natural sciences, engineering, medicine, finance, computer science and social sciences as well.
Musical math
How could there be any music without math? Songs must follow a tempo and rhythm that is written down or remembered in numbers. The structure of a piece of music resembles algebra equations where all the parts must fit and nothing can be left over or astray.
Great composers, like Beethoven and Bach, created most of their musical masterpieces with pen and paper and not by playing a piano or other instrument. It’s probably not a coincidence that Albert Einstein was a very accomplished piano player. And who would have thought that Art Garfunkel, of Simon & Garfunkel, earned a masters degree in math from Columbia University.
“All is number,” said the ancient Greek, Pythagoras (570 B.C.) “Numbers rule the universe.” One of Time’s other great geniuses once said, “Mathematics gives matter its form, but matter gives mathematics its substance.” Go figure.
How is it that 1+1=2? The great philosopher Bertrand Russell said math was “the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.” Yet he defended the compulsory need for a language of numbers. Otherwise he would have been out of a job.
Digging into math
Evidence of human-made math exists at least as far back as 3,100 B.C. in Mesopotamia, buried in the earliest known written records of civilization. It is probably a surprise to no one that one of the first uses of a written number system (math) was for assessing and collecting taxes. In Babylon, a dynastic city in the center of Mesopotamia and the Tigris and Euphrates river valley, archeological digs have found evidence of banks and a system of loans and credit.
Mesopotamia’s math was based on a 60-unit system of digits. This must be why there are 60 seconds to a minute and 60 minutes to one hour. This earliest of man’s math systems measured a circle in 360 degrees (6x60) and divided each lunar month by three seven-day weeks.
But the “Father of Mathematics” today is considered to be the Greek, Archimedes, born in 287 B.C. in Syracuse. He is credited with “discovering” the mathematic foundations for calculus and advancing formulas that became known as geometry, also refined by Euclid (300 B.C.), another ancient mathematician.
Sir Isaac Newton (1643- 1727), best known for his theories about gravity and physical motion was, first and foremost, a mathematician. His 1687 publication, the “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica” revolutionized the perceptions of how the universe worked. His advancements in calculus allowed mathematicians and engineers to make sense of motion and dynamic change, such as the orbits of planets, the motion of fluids, the curves of objects and the interplay of time and distance. Most of his mathematic formulas continue to be used today in all our prominent scientific fields.
Nature’s mathematicians
But all these great thinkers and great empires were very late in discovering math and the use of formulas and patterns. Signs of math were all around them in nature, with birds, bees, plants and ecosystems of diverse species of living things.
These natural systems among both organic and inorganic specimens and interactions is the most convincing evidence that math might predate the existence of man.
When Pythagoras said, “everything is made of numbers” he was being literal. He was looking at the uniform patterns of flower petals, bee hives, sea shells and the feather patterns on birds and the symmetry of insect bodies, spider webs, mud puddles and rock formations.
If Pythagoras and the other ancient Greeks had microscopes they would also have seen the same evidence of math in snowflakes, cellular membranes, atomic particles and in the silicone tracings on computer microchips.
But isn’t mathematics just an abstract concept, only decipherable by humans? Well, no. Among other experiments and evidence, laboratory rats have been taught to count the number of times they must peck on a button in their cages to retrieve a food pellet. In the experiment, one or two pecks won’t work and neither will numerous random pecks. Behavioral scientists successfully trained their rats to make precise pecks in groups of three to win a food reward.
Crows are credited with a strong sense of counting and many other animals also have been observed using math-based abstract thinking. (Dolphins appear to be very gifted math students.)
This all reminds us of the old joke that “there are only three kinds of people on Earth — those that can count and those who can’t.” (Give it a minute, or 60 seconds if you prefer.)
Not so modern technology
Without math, how else would you explain the precise hexagonal patterns that bees create in their honeycombs? Where did bees learn such advanced architecture skills? As it turns out, based on human learning and engineering models, the bees’ hexagons are the most efficient shape to minimize construction materials while producing the largest possible enclosed volume. NASA mimics these same hexagon patterns to erect the outer shield on the Space Shuttle and other spacecraft.
Nowadays high schools, trade schools and universities all stress the importance of a STEM education. (STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.) STEM is a multi-discipline approach to academics and research that emphasizes “real world” applications, career development and technological advancements.
For the record, the four elements of STEM are not equal. Without the ‘M,’ there would be no S, T or E. No Math, no STEM. Sorry, students, no more math shortcuts, OK?
All this supremacy of math, makes us wonder why more mathematicians haven’t been elected to the U.S. presidency or to other high offices of world power.
Maybe this is because what the biologist Charles Darwin said about men of numbers is more true than jest. “A mathematician,” Darwin said, “is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn’t there.”
I’m not sure, but does all that add up for you?
— Rollie Atkinson
5-7-2024
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“ this supremacy of math, makes us wonder why more mathematicians haven’t been elected to the U.S. presidency or to other high offices of world power.”
A guess, pseudo-math, as in economics, is more important to the ruling classes. (And hey, where are the atheists…I know several good at math…?). 🤓
It’s all relative. I mean what is “Twoism” if not as compared to “Oneism”. Math is about ratios and how things relate. It’s fundamental to virtually everything we know of our universe. But even having said that, there are tribes in Africa that historically “don’t count”. They might have a herd of 27 goats and never know that number. Rather they know their herd, and if they are all there or who’s missing. This is conceptually so different I find the fundamental principle hard to define