Submitted by twovests in yourpersonalblog (edited )
Not "there can be artistry in math", and not "math is present in art"
Just "math is art". Every bit of math is a bit of art.
Don't ask me why, don't ask for a justification. Beauty doesn't need to be justified. Math is intrinsically beautiful.
That's probably one of its worst qualities as art, actually. Math is beautiful, but very rarely funny or cathartic or sardonic. And when math is anything but beautiful, it's usually something discovered, not created or articulated.
It's okay that math's main thing is beauty though. Sometimes that's just how an art is. I don't think there's any funny classical music out there. Good architects make sure not to be too beautiful.
What a beautiful language we have. It's a limited language, but so powerful a way to communicate across cultures and centuries.
But people hate math. It's a place of insecurity, of emotional pain, of bad memories. Math is a place where K-12 teachers, teaching math they didn't understand, made their classrooms a crucible rather than a garden. It's no wonder we wilted. I wish we had a world that helped us bloom instead.
Why? Why did teachers make math a thing of pain? Math was the language and tool of science and technology and warfare and specification. It was seen through the lens of economic advancement, and taught through that lens. "The future of our nation relies on your capacity for math. Russia, China, India, the United States. Your failure to internalize the rules of arithmetic is why our enemies will win. If you can't figure out fractions, the nukes will drop on YOUR family."
So many are smacked down, before they even learn the equivalent of a brush stroke. Math as play is precluded by the abuse.
It's as if humor was taught only as a tool for political communication-- could you imagine how dry language could be?
It's as if drawing was reserved for mechanical drawings made on drafting boards-- could you imagine the disdain people would have?
Math is just a language, but we don't teach it in a way that people internalize the meaning of the language. It is a crime that this potential lingua franca is kept insular and elite. Symbolic language is the font of human culture and mathematics would be one of the great unifiers, if it were not locked away.
You and Randall Munroe can both make graph jokes-- mathematics as art.
Steel isn't heavier than feathers, but Limmy is a mathematician and an artist.
When you brake slowly so as not to disturb a loved one sleeping in the car, you are delicately feathering the greater derivatives of position. Committing calculus as an act of love.
Arithmetic is not math, in the same way that brush strokes are not paintings, or piano keys are not songs. But even then, they can be love.
A new recipe by an amateur cook done faithfully means some arithmetic, and that arithmetic is love: Bridging the gap between the amateur cook's knowledge and that of the recipe author.
Mathematics is something you do, and it's a way you communicate it's intrinsically beautiful, and it can be funny and cathartic and weird, and it can be political. It's like poetry; a tool for thought and communication.
Now, check this out: Take a calculator, and type "eight, zero, zero, eight, one, three, five."