Noah Curtis

Writing for Mathematics

February 23, 2011
What is Mathematics?
The conceptual idea of mathematics is as old as written history and has transcended every
spoken language. Yet it is still one of the most, if not the most, vexing subjects we deal with as
humans. Over the many of thousands years we have managed to create what are considered
absolute truths based off of mathematical logic and reasoning, which determine how our tangible
world and universe work around us. But it seems that every time a mathematical truth appears, a
new question arises. Can something that appears to have no end be defined?
One way to identify what mathematics is, is by comparing it to art. Conceptually, art and
mathematics are symmetrical. For starters, both require a person’s attention, thought, time, and
effort. Neither Picasso or Riemann created a work based on a whimsical happenstance. Both put
thought, time, and energy into their works. Another reason the two subjects are so similar is the
idea that neither art nor mathematics has a finite definition. There are many types of art forms,
as there are many types of mathematics topics. In the same breath, what is considered art to one
person may not be art to someone else, the same can hold true for mathematics. Now is
mathematics an art? I’ll let you answer that question, because what is art?
In my own quest to find out what mathematics is, I asked nearly everyone I came in
contact with over my brief week and a half to ponder the question. The thing that astonished me
the most was that nearly everyone gave me a short, brief, and sweet answer after taking an
exaggerated pause to think about the question; and every time someone paused I silently hoped
they’d give me a fully detailed thought process that was indicative of their exaggerated pause.
All those short answers though, grouped together, resembled a long answer split into two parts.
One thought was that mathematics was this subject that had divine power with the ability to
control, detail, and create the world and universe around us. The other line of thought I ran into
was, who cares? A good amount of people related to me that mathematics was merely a waste of
their time, had no real purpose, and that they despised the thought of mathematics. Two opposite
ends of the spectrum to identify a subject as old as written history.
μαθητής (math∙æ∙tãs) is the Ancient Greek word for student or pupil. It is also the word
which mathematics derives from, as one can tell by the pronunciation. It isn’t that far of a
stretch to connect the two. In the educated society we live in, we are taught mathematics
throughout our academic careers, albeit some more than others. In a more historic sense,
mathematics was, and arguably still is, the most prominent subject to study in academia. As
students we are expected to have a certain aptitude of mathematical knowledge, whether students
want to or not, for the sake of understanding the countless ways mathematics can be applied to
the world around us.
Mathematics is used in nearly every facet of 21st-Century life, from buying groceries to
building skyscrapers to facebooking on your smart-phone; mathematics is used by nearly
everyone, everyday. We are truly fortunate for the advancement of mathematics and the ability it
has allowed us to build, control, and understand the world, no, the universe as we know it. Yet
strangely enough one of the greatest mathematicians of our time, Stephen Hawking, has
theorized with mathematical concepts and arguments that the closer one gets to the creation of
our universe, the more mathematics ceases to hold true. Clearly this cannot be true, because that
would some how insinuate that there is no absolute truth to mathematics, meaning mathematics
does not actually exist. If Stephen Hawking’s theory happens to be correct, has the thousands of
years been for naught? No, as humans we could have never made an error in our arguments and
calculations, over the span of thousands of years of practicing, proving, and applying
mathematics, such that something wouldn’t work, because we have defined mathematics as
infallible truths as real as the air we breath.
But what if we did make a mistake? What then becomes of mathematics? Does it end?
Become a created language that all humans can understand, an art form, regulations to control
the world, or just a really old idea? If mathematics isn’t true, what then is mathematics?