Mathematical Poetry |
Mathematics is a language whose importance I can best explain by starting with a familiar story from the Bible. There was a time, according to the Old Testament, when all the people of the earth spoke in a single tongue. This unified them and facilitated cooperation to such a degree that they undertook a collective project to do the seemingly impossible: They would build a tower in the city of Babel that was so high, they could simply climb their way into heaven. It was an unpardonable act of hubris, and God was quick to visit his wrath on the blithe sinners. He spared their lives, but not their language: As described in Genesis 11:7, in order to scuttle the blasphemers' enterprise, all God needed to do was "confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." Thousands of years later, we are still babbling. According to linguists, there are about 1,500 different languages spoken in the world today. And while no one would suggest that this multiplicity of tongues is the only reason for there being so little unity in the world, it certainly interferes with there being more cooperation. - Nothing reminds us of that inconvenient reality more so than the United Nations. Back in the early 1940s, when it was first being organized, officials proposed that all diplomats be required to speak a single language, a restriction that would both facilitate negotiations and symbolize global harmony. But member nations objected-each loath to surrender its linguistic identity -so a compromise was struck; United Nations ambassadors are now allowed to speak any one of five languages: Mandarin Chinese, English, Russian, Spanish, or French. Over the years, there have been no fewer than 300 attempts to invent and promulgate a global language, the most famous being made in 1887 by the Polish oculist L. L. Zamenhof The artificial language he created is called Esperanto, and today it is spoken by more than 100,000 people in twenty-two countries. However, as measured by the millions of those who speak it fluently and by the historic consequences of their unified efforts, mathematics is arguably the most successful global language ever spoken. Though it has not enabled us to build a Tower of Babel, it has made possible achievements that once seemed no less impossible: electricity, airplanes, the nuclear bomb, landing a man on the moon, and understanding the nature of life and death. The discovery of the equations that led ultimately to these earthshaking accomplishments are the subject of this book. In the language of mathematics, equations are like poetry: They state truths with a unique precision, convey volumes of information in rather brief terms, and often are difficult for the uninitiated to comprehend. And just as conventional poetry helps us to see deep within ourselves, mathematical poetry helps us to see far beyond ourselves-if not all the way up to heaven, then at least out to the brink of the visible universe.
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