Pondering the Language of Math

Greetings & Hallucinations! . . . er, I mean Salutations!

Alrighty. . . here is where the name of my blog is going to begin to make some sense to some of you. I had some butterfly-mind moments the other evening. And off my mind went. . . on all kinds of strange wanderings and tangents. And no, I'm not taking any drugs or smoking anything. And no, I didn't miss any medications! haha My mind is just sometimes a dangerous place to hang out!! But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

~~My Little Disclaimer here~~

I'll admit. . . I am not any form of math whiz. Ok, it's out! Back in high school, I struggled to get through Algebra. During the first semester of my sophomore year, my step-mom would help me understand my Algebra homework each night. That year I had a math teacher (Mr. Nesbit, who was a better football coach, from what I heard) who could never explain Algebra in a way that I could understand. After my step-mom explained it, I was Ok, got the homework done and got the answers right (according to the back of the book). But every class period, that teacher would shoot me down (& mark my homework answers wrong) for not doing his method. Then he would sternly tell me to meet with him in his office after school. Although intimidated, I'd show up in his office that afternoon. He would berate me once again, for not doing the math the way he showed in class. He'd ask what was wrong with me. And then he'd begin trying to explain the Algebra again (the same exact way that hadn't made sense to me the first several times). Then the impatient yelling would begin, again. . . which always brought on my tears. I'm a sensitive person and always have been. I suppose my tears only pissed him off more, as the pitch of his yell would increase after that. This happened at least twice a week, during that semester. On a couple of such office visits, he became completely exasperated and he told me, "You're really lousy at math. You will never learn this stuff. You obviously don't have a head for this stuff. I've heard you sing solos in the chorus, you're really good at that. You should stick with that. But you are horrible at math. You should stay far away from math & science. Besides, You're just a girl and you're just gonna grow-up, get married and have a bunch of kids anyway, so you won't need any math. Just stay away from it, because you stink at it."

Honest to God, he actually told me that - more than once! Sadly, I have always been fascinated with, and loved science. And ironically, I never had kids! (So there! Mr. Jerk-head!!) While he was the only teacher who actually said that to me, I think there were 2 or 3 others who wanted to say it. Some of them treated me like I was 12-kinds of stupid. It so was frustrating! Forget for a moment that he/they would only explain stuff over and over again in the same confusing way that didn't make sense to several of us in the first place! Forget that I was not the only one in the class who had trouble with those explanations. In this particular case, I think that I frustrated him and he just didn't care to deal with it anymore. If only he had sent me to a tutor, or talked with my counselor to do that. Sadly, no one offered me that kind of help for math. And back then, I didn't know how to find a tutor and I had no money to pay for it. My step-mom was the only one who could actually help me, but Mr. Nesbit didn't like the method I learned that way. . . even though I got the correct answers with those methods! Forget that I still had to pass Algebra. It was required to graduate high school. He just didn't want to deal with me, or the other four or five students from my class who were having trouble. He labeled us as "stupid" &/or "lazy" and tossed us aside! He "benched" us from the game of math! I had to drop that class and take Algebra again the next year from a kinder, gentler soul (Mr. Mason). Now HE could explain math!! What a saint Mr. Mason was! I passed Algebra that time, and mostly without tears!

In later years, I thankfully discovered that I'm not bad at math. I am only very slow at math! I am dyslexic (really, I was tested), so I have to really take my time with it. If given plenty of time to figure & double-check stuff, I actually do somewhere between ok, to. . . even to pretty well!! Once I was given enough time to do it, I actually got my first A's & B's in math. . . even College Algebra!! Go figure! But enough of that. I just wanted to get that disclaimer out there. . . I am no mathematician! So, please don't slam my innocent possible misunderstandings of math theories. . . or whatever. Please have patience for my strange little mental butterfly thoughts. Discussion is ok, just please be gentle. K?

~~Now for my topic of ponder~~

So Here's the thing -- for whatever bizarre reason the other evening I began wondering about the "language of mathematics." Maybe it was after watching an episode of "Numbers," I don't remember. Have you ever noticed how in practically every show or movie about space or Extra Terrestrials (except "Contact" or "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind") the characters kind of assume that the E.T.s will (of course) speak English. . . or they have some wildly cool "Universal Translator" to turn the interactions into English. We also seem to assume that all E.T.s would have numbers 0-9 and the numbers will look just like that and they will call them "zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine." Just like that. Although, in the movie "Contact," I believe the E.T.s might have used ones and zeros. Or maybe it was just sound pulses totaling in prime numbers. But I don't remember for sure. And of course all E.T.s will recognize our symbol for Omega or Epsilon, or any other of our various symbols (symbols sometimes used in math equations), right? That's where I was thinking, "How crazy!!!" I think it's doubtful that they are going to recognize our human-made symbols. . . At least in theory. Unless they have studied us for a long time and learned our languages. Or. . . maybe those symbols were brought to us eons ago from some E.T.s, but then I doubt that all E.T.s speak the same language. I'm just guessing here.

So I thought further (scary, I know!). If they (the potential E.T.s) would not call the numbers by the same name as we do and they might not draw/write them the same, how would we recognize them to be numbers. How would they send us a mathematical message? Perhaps they could send us various artistic things, like fractals, and they could monitor how we'd decipher that. . . but over what medium? Light waves? Radio Waves? And what if the potential recipients of such a message were a race of beings without eyesight? Obviously, most of us have the gift of eyesight. Then there is the movie, "Contact." You might remember how the characters (starring Jodi Foster) encounter an orderly, radio signal from space and determine it is mathematical. Did you notice how she frequently closed her eyes in order to listen better? Interesting. And there was even a character, one of her colleagues in the movie, who was blind. He was a great help to her decoding some aspects of the message. Eyesight can sometimes be distracting. In that movie, they had to break the code and decipher the message. It was a message sent in patterned sound pulses, strung together. So I thought, "Hummm that would work if you had the senses of hearing or could feel vibrations. That would even work if a race of beings did not have eyesight." Pretty nifty, huh? If they couldn't hear, at least they might feel the vibrations. But I wonder if there is such a thing as a race of beings, somewhere, who could not feel vibrations. That's an odd concept. Of course ultimately, in the movie "Contact," the message (once decoded) ended up being plans for a machine to be built. But it was tricky to decipher because it required looking at two-dimensional images but thinking in three dimensions! So in that case, eyesight was needed. But I wonder how else they might have communicated the plans. It's hard to imagine.

All of that got me wondering how many mathematical messages (or even other forms of messages) we have been sent & possibly received but we didn't understand. Perhaps we get them ALL the time!! A bit like a fax that comes in and slips off of the fax machine and down onto the floor, and wafts under the table. No one sees it and the cleaning crew comes in at night and tosses it out. Or maybe we just thought they were static. We tend to only think in two dimensions (something printed on a page), or three dimensions. What if our potential E.T. messengers think in a 5th or 8th dimension. . . or a 9th or 11th dimension? We also tend to think in terms of only 5 or 6 senses. What if there are senses that never occurred to us, because we don't have them (yet?) and we are not built to have them (yet)? Obviously, then we wouldn't actually receive the messages from those messengers. That is to say, they might come through, but because we don't understand, we dismiss it as. . . a form of static. Too bad. They might be so fascinating!! Or what if the potential messages were being sent telepathically, but those who received them, just figured they were random, crazy thoughts? They might be dismissed. And if those "thoughts" or messages weren't dismissed, who among you would believe them? I know I might think it sounded awfully nuts! How frustrating for someone trying to figure out what to do with that.

Then I wonder if the potential E.T.s know about things like. . . what we call "string theory." Did they wrestle with the 5 different perspectives of string theory, as some of our scientists have? Did they see more than 5 perspectives? Do they know we now also call it something else? Once we finally united our 5 perspectives, we now call it "M theory." At least that's what I last understood. What would any of the E.T.s out there call "string theory?" I wonder if they receive old episodes of "NOVA" or "The Elegant Universe" out there somewhere. Maybe they are FAR beyond the string theory. They probably call it something in another language, so we wouldn't understand right away anyway. Kind of like. . . what do you call a dog with no legs? Doesn't matter, he can't come anyway. But I digress! Since they probably speak a different language, we couldn't discuss string theory (or much of anything else) with them just yet anyway. Would they think we don't understand the theory? And maybe we don't fully understand it yet! How would we communicate the theory in mathematical terms? I'm sure it has been done! I probably wouldn't understand that, even though I do "understand" much of the explanations of string theory!! Certainly not well enough to discuss with a physicist or quantum physicist, but perhaps better than many folks. Of course, a physicist could string me along, too!

We humans have a nasty habit of thinking we "understand" something, even when there may be much more to a given subject that we don't know about yet. . . or don't yet have the apparatus to observe, measure or study it. In that regard, I suppose it's a bit like that first Algebra class was for me. . . I thought I was understanding things, until I'd flunk a test, or the teacher yelled at me for "getting it wrong." I didn't yet know I needed to ask more questions. But I didn't yet know what questions I needed to ask, because I thought I understood. It's a twisted, circular track! So, do we REALLY ever know it or understand it. . . whatever "it" is?

I wonder what other messages could be transmitted in the language of mathematics. I realize that math and science related things could be sent in a mathematical language. But I mean what things that we typically don't think of as mathematical. There is a lot of art and music that is very mathematical and very beautiful and moving. Go figure! But I'll bet there are other, seemingly non-mathematic, topics that could be communicated mathematically, but I just can't think of them right now. I'm sure the character, Professor Charlie Epps, could really come up with some good ones! Maybe. . . something like a butterfly path. That's something that seems so completely random, un-patterned, and non-directional, but I wonder if there might even be some sort of mathematical order to that? Maybe there is hope for me after all!!

Enough of my rambling for now. See?
My brain. . . a strange place! :-)
Be well!

~Paulena