"I have discovered that all of our unhappiness derives from one single source - not being able to sit quietly in a room." - Blaise Pascal |
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the VWC Student Chapter to the MAA |
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 Tidewater Zen Group |
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 Professor of Mathematics |
 Director of PORTfolio | |
 Held Monday, February 23, 2004 HSMC 2004 Luncheon Talk: Inverse Problems Next year's contest will be held Monday, Feb. 28, 2005 E-mail to get on the mailing list |
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"One is claiming, in short, that there is a quality of beauty in mathematics, just as there is in a work of art or a piece of music. I was, in fact, suggesting in my own essay ["The joy of mathematics" Coll. Math. J. 23 (1992)] that, just as any sensitive human being can be brought to appreciate beauty in art, music or literature, so that person can be educated to recognize the beauty in a piece of mathematics. The rarity of that recognition is not due to the "fact" that most people are not mathematically gifted but to the crassly utilitarian manner of teaching mathematics and of deciding syllabi and curricula, in which tedious, routine calculations, learned as a skill, are emphasized at the expense of genuinely mathematical ideas, and in which students spend almost all their time answering someone else's questions rather that asking their own."
From a review by Peter Hilton of The Pleasures of Counting, in MAA's Monthly, May '98
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Scientists like to speak in the language of mathematics. There are many good mathematicians among us. Those of us who look at reality and speak about reality in the language of mathematics find that there is no other language that can speak as well as mathematics does about reality. When a mathematician admires reality in terms of mathematics, he has the tendency to believe God is the best mathematician. Otherwise how could things be arranged in such a way? If God is not a mathematician, how could he create things perfectly in this way?
To know and to understand are two different things. When you climb a ladder, unless you abandon the lower step, you will not be able to climb to a higher one. Knowledge is like that. If you are not ready to let go of your knowledge, you cannot get a deeper knowledge of the same thing. The history of science proves this. You discover a new thing that helps you to understand better. Yet you are aware that some day you'll have to let go of that thing in order to discover something deeper and higher.
Understanding is a process. It is a living thing.
Concentration is the food of understanding. You have to be concentrated for understanding to be possible. When you want to solve a mathematical problem, you have to concentrate. You cannot turn on the radio and let your mind be dispersed. When you are standing in front of a tree, you have to concentrate on the tree. This brings you understanding of the tree. In your daily life, we have to live in a concentrated way. When eating, you have to eat in concentration. When drinking, you have to drink in concentration.
Thich Nhat Hanh (Coming Home: Jesus and the Buddha as Brothers, Riverhead Books, New York (1999)): | |
 Molly and I at Hatteras |
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