Liberal Arts Blog — Math to The Rescue, Rescuing Math — How To Put Math at The Center of Your Life
Liberal Arts Blog — Monday is the Joy of Math, Statistics, Shapes, and Numbers Day
Today’s Topic: Math to the Rescue, Rescuing Math — How To Put Math at the Center of Your Life
All of life is applied math. If you don’t get the math, you are a patsy at the poker table of life. Math is the best tool for cutting through the underbrush of life. Math is a machete.
Math is Occam’s razor. The incarnation of the principle of parsimony. Never, ever begin a conversation without identifying the first premise of each party. Do not proceed to secondary or tertiary premises before addressing that first premise.
Can that first premise be quantified in any way? If so, do it.
Last time, three weeks ago, the theme was “Think 14” and involved turning “syzygy” and “Orion” into verbs as tools for discovering your first principles and aligning your daily practice with those principles. (To refresh your memory see first link below.)
Today, a follow-up. I might have entitled this post “Think 21” because I am adding a third group of seven. To the seven principles and the seven practices I now add a third column or a a third panel in the Muresianu triptych. In that panel is a list of seven stories or anecdotes. Think the best Aesop’s fables ever.
Or the best parables from the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Analects.
But first a question. Have you made your first two lists of seven yet? If not, what are you waiting for?
All those you love will thank you forever if you do — that is if you then push the send button with precious gifts that will be valued more than any other gifts they have ever received, because you will have sent them a piece of your soul.
And my bet is that if you do, at least two of the ten to whom you send the lists to will reciprocate — because all of us have roughly the same DNA and in there is reciprocity gene that makes us feel guilty if anyone we love does something nice for us and we don’t reciprocate. You will have doubled your investment return! Hallellujah!
Think John Keats. Think “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Think of stout Cortez with eagles eyes and his men. “Silent on a peak in Darien.”
The Pacific Ocean of your own soul awaits its discovery. Your loved ones eagerly anticipate your report.
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
CONFUCIUS: Regular Periodicity, the “Rectification of Names”
1. The gist of the first paragraph of the Analects: “Isn’t it a pleasure having learned something once to return to it with a regular periodicity?” In my formulation — thematic continuity is key to depth of thought and joy. Everyone should have a thematic calendar assigning each day a different joy and a different civic issue. Learning something new about each, writing it up, and sharing what you learn, will enrich your life and that of those you love.
2. The Master is asked in Book XIII: if you were made Emperor, what would you do first? His response was “the rectification (cheng) of names.” Definitions of terms are everything. This to me is the Confucian equivalent of my idea that you must discuss first premises first — eg. the definition of the key word. Take for example, justice. Do you remember the relationship between gratitude and justice? Have you read the second attachment to every email I send out? What words matter most to you? What do they mean? Can you quantify them?
AESOP’S FABLES — THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER, THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE
1. The Tortoise and the Hare — Genius is 90% perspiration. Laziness. Boredom. Have many names. The right path is a narrow one. Hewing to it is no easy task. Patience matters.
2. The Ant and the Grasshopper — variation on the theme. The right thing is kind of boring isn’t it? One little story, more wisdom than an economics textbook.
AESOP’S FABLES — THE LION AND THE BULLS, THE WOLF AND THE LAMB, THE CROW AND THE PITCHER
1. The lion and the bulls. United we survive. Divided, we don’t. Abraham Lincoln’s favorite fable.
2. The Wolf and the Lamb. The bad guys understand one language. The only road to peace in the real world is strength. Weakness is raw meat to the tiger. The first fable I ever memorised — in French, age 11. Lamartine’s translations of Aesop are the best.
3. The crow and the pitcher (last link below). Ingenuity is the key to progress. Ingenuity is not equally distributed. We are not all Einsteins, Edisons, or Carnegies.
Is anger or envy the best response? or are these toxins? The stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel are two answers to these questions. So, please, what are your top seven principles? top seven practices? top seven stories?
Let’s harness mathematics to focus our collective mind, heart, and soul. Math is an alembic as well as a machete.
Liberal Arts Blog — Think 14! Seven Principles! Seven Practices! One Process!
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John… | Poetry Foundation
The Ant and the Grasshopper — Wikipedia
The Bulls and the Lion — Wikipedia
The Wolf and the Lamb — Wikipedia
The Tortoise and the Hare — Wikipedia
The Crow and the Pitcher — Wikipedia
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic) Last four years of posts organized thematically:
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to math, statistics, or numbers in general.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to math.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
