Cultivating a Culture of Mathematics | How rational thinking fosters justice

To place the issue under discussion in perspective, we begin by considering the following commonplace scenario. Someone in position of power can, and often does, (mis)use their authority to benefit friends, relatives and those who happen to enjoy proximity with them while using the same authority to go after their adversaries. Now, application of a modicum of reason would dissuade such people from benefiting others out of turn and thus retain their credentials as a just and honest person. This is so because if one were to benefit someone out of turn, then some other person with stronger credentials who has been ignored in the process would have all the reason and justification to call their bluff for dishonest and unscrupulous demeanour and may even result in legal proceedings being initiated against the former for fraud and cheating.

Apart from those who believe in a deity, a superior power or a grand designer, there are those who boast of having no use for one, a God if you like, who is up there overseeing and supervising the workings of the world involving life and death, or such things like day and night following in succession with such clockwork precision etc. In their scheme of things, they pin it down, and not without reason, to the laws of nature to make sense of the aforementioned phenomena. Most of them come across as diehard advocates of reason and would like to be addressed as such, never mind their agnostic, or even atheist credentials.

No issues on that, but hold on!

HOW DO THEY APPLY THAT REASONING TO THE FOLLOWING VERY NATURAL QUESTIONS THAT BEG ANSWERS?

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Can truth be equal to falsehood?
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Can a tyrant be treated at par with one who has been a victim of their tyranny?
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Can justice be equated with injustice?

Is it reasonable to postulate that one who has been the victim of injustice, indignity and inequality at the hands of the high and mighty during his life on earth and who hasn’t had the resources to fight the scourge of such injustices against him shall, after his death, ‘return to dust’ as we all must, including of those who had made his life miserable on earth, without the latter having to expiate for his sins, here in this world or ‘elsewhere’?

Keeping aside the religious angle to the discourse for a while whereby different religions and religious schools of thought have their own versions of a life hereafter or of a certain variant of ‘divine justice’, the point I wish to make is this - why is it that our search for design and pattern underlying the working of the physical world merely stops at how the laws of nature work? How is it that the world where there is such breathtaking design, such an unmistakable harmonising order of its parts, no need is felt for that order to be sought beyond the physical world into the other world, to inform our understanding of it and of the phenomena governing the action and conduct of human beings towards each other.

The bottom line is that even a modicum of human intelligence would dictate that the search and requirement of a design that is sought to be explored in the physical world has to be extrapolated to the world of human behaviour, where the same search for order and design would entail an approach that would settle the above mentioned questions in the negative, as they indeed should, based on our experience and commonsense.

A natural consequence of this line of reasoning would be that those who have had access to vast amounts of resources and were delirious with absolute power and authority and who had used that authority to dispossess, disempower and deprive those who were weak, voiceless and powerless shall have to meet their moments of comeuppance. Whether now during their lifetime, or ‘later’ in some other form of life in an altogether different world, that is not germane to the discourse!

Once it’s argued that science, or more pertinently mathematics, seeks to restore order and design from the vortex of utter chaos and commotion within the natural world or the world of mathematics, it becomes clear that the endeavor of science/ mathematics bears uncanny similarity with the idea of justice which is sought to achieve precisely that order in the society. Justice, equity and equality are to order, design and a sense of proportion in exactly the same way as injustice, inequality and violence are to chaos, clutter and disorder. After all, a society that is based on the principles of justice and fair play can hope to emerge as a happy, morally upright society where people are at peace with nature and with themselves.

“CAN MATHEMATICS BE SPIRITUAL?”

The following important quote of Francis Su is worth noting:

“In both mathematics and in most religions, one comes face-to-face with the reality of immortal objects that we cannot see. Religious people are often mocked for belief and interaction with a non-physical supernatural God. And yet, such mockers have all learned to count, to interact and reason with non-physical Platonist conceptions of whole numbers, and even to apply them to what we call (by contrast) “the real world.” Mathematics puts us “in touch with immortality in the form of eternal mathematical laws” as the historian of mathematics D. E. Smith once noted. Additionally, many learned scientists have marvelled at how this interaction can even take place. Einstein himself asked, “How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?” In other words, it should surprise us that Platonic mathematical objects interact with the real world so constructively — but we take this marvel for granted.”

That is in keeping with what Einstein had said much earlier:

“The more I study science, the more I am amazed by the complexity of the
universe and the more I believe in the existence of a creator.”

Finally, it’s worth contemplating how certain experiences we encounter in religion are common with those that one comes across in mathematics? Which’s why such epistemic values as the dignity of human beings, the importance of justice, the power of forgiveness or the corrupting nature of sin are all truths that can be felt profoundly in a religio-spiritual experience as much as the beauty of symmetry or a deep connection between disparate ideas in mathematics that often elicit profound astonishment and wonder in mathematical experiences. Here it bears emphasising that the religio-spiritual experience as referred to above is to be understood as a certain state of transcendence of the human spirit and by no means as the ritual side of it that is merely enjoined to be performed as part of duty by the individual.

And that can be largely ensured if the society were exposed to a certain basic level of mathematical literacy-familiarity where the mind would be trained to think rationally and thus with honesty and justice.That would make a strong case for pleading to promote a culture of mathematics in order for the society to restore to reason and critical thought the rightful place that they deserve so as to foster values of justice and peace in the society.

SCIENCE AS A POTENT ‘POLITICAL’ WEAPON

The appellation of as the ‘cradle of modern civilisation’ being attached to the West has been earned precisely on the strength of a long and rich tradition in education and scholarship which has been a great enabler in setting standards for the highest values of democracy in the shape of justice, the rule of law, individual liberty and the right to freedom of speech that are enshrined as inviolable instruments of conduct in public life.

On the flip side of it, there is a case for arguing that in an effort to maintain its supremacy as a superpower that informs the state’s policy of subordinating large swathes of the world to its will, the ‘civilised’ West seems to have no compunction in creating conditions of chaos and turmoil outside its borders that entails unleashing violence and bloodshed and in the process destroying economies and killing innocent civilians in their legions in places that are seen by them as ‘rogue’ states. One wonders how upon earth would that reconcile with their idea of justice and the rule of law that ceases to apply once it involves the “lesser mortals” who are seen as ‘others’, belonging outside the ‘civilised world”. The point is that here again it’s their leadership role in science that provides the modern West the leeway to throw its weight around in subjugating people and countries that lag behind in science and education. That may sound paradoxical but ceases to be so once we realise that everything that impacts human lives in many important and positive ways also has a flip side to it where its huge negative potential cannot be discounted. The ongoing conflagration in the middle east is a telling testimony to that ugly reality!