Redux: What We Are Not vs. Math, Art,and Lies Our Bodies Tell - originally posted 2018
My book club is wrapping up Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid in November. We enjoy our digressions so much that they leak over into emails between meetings. Barney Sperlin sent us Mathcircler Dr. Alon Amit 's excerpt from a discussion on Quora : Math is not something boys are better at, it's not a spectator sport, it's not a system of arbitrary rules...it's not easier or better in base 12 or base π, it's not a young person's game, it's not useless in the real world, it's not beholden to the real world, it's not learnable in one year or from one book or one website... it's not beyond your grasp if you recognize that it will take time and dedication and active effort... From Keith Ramsay, Pee-Haich-Dee in mathematics : Mathematics is not just the most stable part of our favorite theories of the world. Replace "math is" with "I am." You see anything useful in there? I do. I also found in...