How seeking simple patterns is made complex by our maths ignorance 
Wednesday, March 7, 2007, 08:39 AM
The laws of science we can understand rest largely on proportion and symmetry, particles and resonance. But understanding stops there for most of us. Part is cultural, inbred from evolution. Indian numbers like 0 and 3 and 5 that moved west to us through the arab world carry hieroglyphic difficulty to our hard-wired roman III and V senses, negatives offend our Nordic need to win, and Pythagorean mystery surrounds square roots. A millenium or two later, those who grew up comfortable in math schooling are ready to seek deeper. Sadly the majority of western post-docs regard maths as tool not delight. Seeking the math patterns under say sociologiocal phenomena they leave to the pyschohistorians of science fiction.

I argue that the reason lies in our teaching of it. Our early teachers were too often failed journeymen, ex-apprentices unaware of the existence of the skills of the master craftsman. Unless lucky, we leave schooling not knowing that iridescence is simple, coriolis forces have a logical explanation, and that the laws of particles – like the Standard Model beloved of nuclear physics, are crude approximations to the underlying truths thare are within range of each of us.

Small wonder post-modernism with its lack of faith looks attractive, our institutions are thought to be terminally untrustworthy, and philosophy has floundered since before our era. Even God was blamed by Adam to explain rotting apples to his difficult progeny. These patterns are now obvious, as soon could be the rules that bring order out of chaos. This is an exciting century, as pattern-finding math starts reaching enough of us to make sense of chaos.


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