A Pattern Language or The 60 Minutes Inspired Tirade

On 60 Minutes tonight they did a story on a savant (which of course was much more interesting than Andy Rooney's usual, bitter, senile rant on whatever small, worthless topic has turned him into an angry old man) who showed no signs of social disability (as is popular with the view of savants since the making of the movie Rain Man).

What interested me was not the possible research on brain damage's link to savantism, or his numerical tricks which in all honesty could be learned in a matter of years or months to a clever mathematician (not to disparage the mysterious wonder that is his brain; after all it takes him moments to do what many mathematicians train years for), but how he interpreted numbers.
He said that he saw numbers as colors and shapes, landscapes, and spaces. They were ugly (289 for example) or beautiful and "chubby" (333). They had a character to them that most people have dismissed since the rejection of numerology.

Perhaps we've thrown the baby out with bath water in that sense. When I saw his "water color" interpretation of pi, I was astounded. It was symmetrical, colorful... awe inspiring really. To be able to see pi as a shape, as a solid object is... confounding and exciting. I am curious what his interpretation of e and the square-root of two are.

To complicate matters, he was able to learn Icelandic at a proficient level in 7 days as a challenge. Again I'm amazed at the pervasiveness of numbers in what we do, and who we are. Whatever part of the brain is functioning for his numerical gift also functions for language. So to those who say they excel at language but not math (and vice versa), I say you are not trying hard enough in one or the other. Language after all, is a formula for communication. Grammar is the operator (+ - / *), and vocabulary is the variable (Jean went to the store: x + y = z).

I've seen how that part of the brain also functions for music in the people I've met who play instruments and study math are almost always better at math than those who have never picked one up in their life (this is counting those who just played tuba for two years in middle school). That's not to say all the musicians I've met are math whizzes, but every math whiz I've met has played an instrument. Bach for example is one of the most studied musicians for his math, for his style, and for his passion. Every piece is so precise, so regulated, but at the same time, so open to interpretation. Bach can be played and understood in more than one way despite the supposed mathematical and formal "straight jacket" that accompany his music. Phillip Glass however is a mystery to everyone who isn't Phillip Glass (that one's for you mom).
You can see the numbers in art as well from the golden ration to the Fibonacci Sequence. I have heard people deny the mathematics in art, who then used these two mathematical principles as inspiration for a project. Even if the artists are unaware of their math (as most artists I've met are -to the point of loathing that which makes their art amazing-) in symmetries, in patterns, in rules, limits, and of course, the lack of limits.

The Pythagoreans jealously guarded their math secrets from the masses, so much to the point that supposedly they executed a member who was teaching a proof to sailors (see the supposed killer proof here -gotta love the square root of 2-). As the great Professor El-Hodiri would say, "Never teach proofs to the peasants!" (in a joking manner of course) Numbers are even important symbolic messages in the Bible which people use to (rightly or wrongly) support their interpretations, such as the meanings of six, seven, and forty (however I completely reject the "Bible Code" that claims a secret message in the pattern of words. Give me enough time, and the right mathematical tools, and I can find messages about the end of the world in Dr. Seuss. Yurtle the Turtle is espescially apocalyptic. Oh, the places you'll go... on shrooms). The Mayans, who achieved the concept of zero long before the Europeans stole it from the Arabs (who stole it from the Indians, according to every Indian grad student in my department... hmm... "love of country" much?), used the math of astronomy to determine the future, the past, and the present. The world cycled along on a never ending path of destruction and creation, in a system that was slightly more accurate than the calendar that we use today.

To cap off the importance of mathematics, think of it in an architecture or engineering sense, to give it a solid vision that music and art lack (only in concrete terms). Those buildings that do not adhere to certain principles, fail. Miserably. They fall into the dust. Those that reflect, uphold, and accentuate the mathematical principles they were built upon, have survived earthquakes, floods, wars, and famine. If you doubt me, go to Egypt, Italy, France, China, Japan, Mexico, Peru, or Puebla.

Math is the perfect paradise model of the world, created to describe it, to manipulate it, to further it, to drag it down, to recreate it, and to destroy it. Numbers have no meaning without context, but those patterns within the numbers permeate our life in everything we do. They are so self-evident, so awe-inspiring, and so ubiquitous (I've used that word twice today) that we can no longer separate the math from the reality.

I am not advocating a return to numerology, which has religious implications that I think are on par with the guys in the street with "the End is Nye*!" signs on their backs. But I am advocating a re-enforcement of why numbers are so important to us. Why we have to learn a^2 + b^2 = c^2, or that every number multiplied by five ends with the digit five or zero. If we neglect the math in what we do, we miss out on an integral part of the system. Of the world. Of our own humanity. Because Math, as a system, is at its core human. We have a need for this world within us. We have a need for this interpretation, this language, this pattern... it makes this confusing world somehow more manageable.

I leave with one of my favorite quotes about a man who looked for God in the numbers, and managed to define the finite and infinite (and whose work is found in all fields indebted to higher math: economics, physics, astronomy, statistics, etc.): "No one shall expel us from the Paradise that Cantor has created."

... of course, Cantor was also institutionalized, and believed he could mathematically prove that Shakespeare didn't write his own material. Hey... nobody's perfect.

*Bill Nye the Science Guy? Yes. I misspelled Nigh. Sue me.