The Mysticism of Math

In the previous installment of The Story of Maths, we learned that mathematics’s origin is practical and its initial development and appreciation are just about running and managing the society and resources with order and a bit of introduction to logic.

In the second episode, The Genius of the East, tackled ancient civilizations from the East, in particular, the Chinese, Indian and Arabic, discussing how they actually propelled the unraveling of mathematics way ahead of Western perspective.

Ancient Chinese understood numbers as something magical and mystical. Even in present China, certain numbers and combinations of number have sub-textual meanings in them, of both good and bad. Arrangements and structures required mathematicians to build, such as the rank of imperial consorts. The decimal numeric system they've used also influenced other civilizations which helped develop understanding mathematics.

Indians, with their culture highly inclined to the ways of Hinduism, also contributed much in mathematics. The concept of zero was believed to have started in ancient Indian civilization. The reason why zero was to be recognized is its deep meaning, in accordance to Hindi conventions. Zero was of great importance because the goal of this religion is to liberate themselves from the cycle of life and go back to the origin, which is nothing and zero is the number to represent nothingness. Negative numbers were also introduced for finances which was an important aspect of their civilization. Concepts of infinity started in this civilization. Their comprehension of infinity is very similar to that of in calculus, which made this civilization more advanced in terms of understanding further knowledge about mathematics compared to the ancient West.

Contributions of ancient Arabic civilization to the development of modern Mathematics is very great. They developed Algebra which then made the concept of irrational numbers. Greek mathematics, which was mostly spatial and geometric, was improved with the methods of Arabic mathematics. They also had solutions for cubic equations, which was led by Omar Khayyam in the 9th Century. Leonardo of Pisa, or commonly known as Fibonacci, was a son of a merchant in the Middle East. There he learned the Hindu-Arabic numerical system, which made him highly interested in mathematics. As he introduced this numerical system to the West, he made the way Western people understand and use mathematics improve. A famous contribution he made was the Fibonacci sequence.

This installment made me realize that much of the origin of modern mathematics are philosophical and metaphysical in nature. This just means that understanding mathematics won't separate the mind from being philosophical since both require much brain work. Mathematics is basically a way of representation to anything fathomable, may it be physical or abstract. Fear of understanding math is forgivable. Each of us has our own ways of understanding the world around us. Mathematics may intimidate a lot of people but people, in nature, are capable of thinking with great capabilities, thus, all of us have our own complex ways in us. It can be mathematical, be it great or small. 
                                                                                                                                                        Originally Published: 12/11/13 03:21 Pacific Standard Time