A Mathematician’s Apology

Title reused from G.H. Hardy’s 1940 essay.

Apology: “something said or written in defense or justification of what appears to others to be wrong or of what may be liable to disapprobation” – Merriam Webster Unabridged

---

Premise: There are things to know.
Many of them we (collectively) do know, most of them we don’t, and quite a few of them we think we know and are wrong about. That could be everything for all I know.

But there are things out there to be known anyway. (I think… even that’s debated among epistemologists. It could be that the world is totally chaotic and any real knowledge is just a figment. I choose not to believe that.)

Hypothesis: It’s not just a few things which can be known; it is everything in the natural world. (Everything that does not operate off of chance, that is, such as the flow of water and the throwing of dice. But the things that do operate off chance can be known to do so.) If not by us humans, then by someone or, at least, in theory.

Everything in nature is knowable.

Reasoning: Everything in nature follows definite rules or laws – a thing either works one way or it works another. This order does not apply just to some things and not others. It applies to all things – growth, motion, aerodynamics, the circle of life, etc.

I believe this to be true because I know math.

Mathematics is a set of rules that govern nature. Math is nature’s blueprint and it offers us a view into how nature actually works.

Why this matters: The significance of this rests on our definition of nature. Is nature just the world of earth, air, fire, water, and non-human animals? That kind of stuff? Or does it extend to humans too? The answer is obvious. Of course it does. But we have imposed so many unnatural things upon ourselves and ways in which we maneuver within the rest of nature that we don’t tend to include ourselves in the definition.

We Follow the Rules

Since we are a part of nature then we too must follow the rules. Now, these rules can be broken and often are. Animals, for example, contain a blue print in our DNA which governs our growth. But there are influences outside of what is natural which can smudge that blueprint. Nevertheless, regardless of what unnatural end product we may observe, the way we are supposed to be is written.

The World Is Black And White

This is a premise upon which I base my beliefs and the way I act.

The world is black and white. Shades of grey are just ignorance.

Within nature, there are laws for everything – the way things fall, the way mammals feed their young, the foods which each creature needs, the way we grow, the movement of the stars, etc. And so I believe it is the same for humans. There is a program which we should be running – for child raising, for diet, for sport performance, for optimal memorization, for everything we do and every way we operate.

Discovering the Absolutes

In order to find out the way we are supposed to be we can look to the people who still live as a part of nature – we can look to hunter gatherers. If you cannot visit them directly you can observe them vicariously through others. Weston Price’s work Nutrition and Physical Degeneration is a great resource. There are travel videos such as Tribe which give us a glimpse into these other cultures. There are many books available now and even many videos and blogs about them.

But their ways too are rife with ignorance and nonsense. It seems that knowing nature is not an easy endeavor.

A Way Of Thinking

For me this is more than just supposition or theory. It is habit. My dad raised me in a web of absolutes and I went on to spend six years in college studying philosophy and math. My life has been a constant search for answers.

In math there were always answers and if I worked hard enough I could find them. Everywhere else I searched as though they were there. I still search. It’s what drives me. Some meditation or something might turn this tendency off but I like the way I am so I’m not seeking to change.

There Is a Lot To Know

I know (or think I know) some of it. I know some of it because I have chanced upon it. By that I mean I was set up in a particular situation that led me down a certain path. I was raised by a mom who loved literature and a dad who loved mechanics. We had a piano. My mom’s family came from a farm and so she fed us butter and believed in healthy food choices (not that she knew much about what those really were but she sparked the interest in me anyway).

So, after my short 34 years on this planet I think I know a thing or two about food and disease, music, math, bodies, and some other stuff. I continuously find myself to be wrong about things along the way (as we all do) and so I replace that bit of “knowledge” with another. But all the while believing my knowledge to

1. be knowledge and
2. be absolute.

We All Have Different Bits of Knowledge

Here is where I’m going with this:

Having knowledge of certain things doesn’t make me think I am better than those who don’t have it. This doesn’t make any sense and I don’t believe it. There is a whole lot to know. None of us can know it all (all of us can’t even know it all) and the things that each of us knows is pretty much a random selection of the way we’ve stumbled through this life.

But I probably come across supercilious sometimes because I do believe that there are aspects of the way I live which are better than aspects of the way other people live. (The converse is also true of course. We are all better or worse in different ways.)

Those aspects simply represent my small bag of knowledge. For example, I know (or believe that I know) that it is better for a baby to be carried most of the time rather than pushed in a stroller most of the time. I believe one of nature’s rules is that we carry our babies. We evolved to do this and we have not un-evolved to not do it. So, when I meet a person that doesn’t carry her child, I don’t think I am better than her because I carry mine (that is so completely ridiculous), I think that this one thing I do for my child is better. There are things she does which are better than some things that I do. She may have more patience than I have, maybe she is more loving, maybe so many things. But this one thing I do is better.

And I believe it is better because I believe the fabric of nature is ordered. There is a right way and a wrong way.

This is not judgment. This is just me observing reality based on my hypothesis.