Stephen Tonkin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sue Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I once heard an
> > English lit professor say that math could be
> an
> > art, and that mathematicians might derive
> great
> > joy and satisfaction from the aesthetics of
> it.
>
> "Could be"? "Might"? It is a constant wonder to me
> that so many people seem blind to the beauty and
> elegance of maths. It must be akin to going
> through life blind to great art, deaf to great
> music, literature and poetry. Even more of a
> wonder to me is the phenomenon that so many
> otherwise intelligent people actively choose to
> cut themselves off from such an elegant facet of
> understanding/appreciating the world.

That's a bit precious picking at modals. Sheesh.
My aim was to show you that some people working in
other areas, such as literature, see that there
can be great beauty and art in mathematics, even in
the fine abstractions of it.

> > Also, I believe that some people have a
> particular
> > talent for math and actually enjoy it.
>
> I have no great talent for it -- I seem to have a
> knack for Geometry, and Applied Maths is mostly
> within my capability, but Pure Maths -- the really
> interesting stuff -- has always been a bit of a
> struggle, even at undergraduate level. I tend to
> gravitate towards geometrical (as opposed to
> analytical) solutions/explanations of pure
> mathematical things.
>

Indeed, you may as you say have no great talent for it,
but many people do, even for Pure Mathematics, which is
I suspect one of the arenas for enjoying the aesthetic abstractions,
the art and beauty of it, along with the intriguing aspects
of sacred geometry and stuff like the fibonacci series in
nature and phi.

The Jung Center offered a course on Sacred Geometry which I wasn't
able to take at the time, though I did get the book and had a great
deal of fun .. indeed, derived a deep satisfaction .. from reading
it and playing around with lines and forms on graph paper. It helped
me to realize that some math derives from experience and things that
can be sensed, that it can gibe with common intuition of the world itself.
From that moment on, I could never understand why math is taught the way
it is in schools; and I do understand why I didn't take to it very well,
though I scored very high in math on the SAT and made good grades until
I got to a mean-spirited calculus teacher that finally did me in. I'm
glad that happened because the conventional teaching methodology never
did make math interesting or palatable.

> > Imagine.
>
> Imagine not!

But I do imagine... and finely.

> > Anyway, I like Tonkin's attitude towards
> this
> > book. I think I'll take a look at it and
> just
> > hope to God that it's readable for me.
>
> Hedge your bets: get it from a library.

Good advice, but I'm a very slow reader, so I like to have
a book on hand for a long while.

Sue





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2005 07:18AM by Sue.