Language and mathematics are two subjects that one cannot escape in elementary or high school. Why is that? The school boards may view math and language to be essential for one’s development in life but is it really that important? To look at feral children and use them as an example of what would happen when you don’t educate a child with math and language is an extreme example. Or is it?
Would we all be speechless dumbfounded beings if not for the basics of language and mathematics? I think the famous saying “money is what makes the world go around” ought to be replaced with “words and numbers is what makes the world go around.” Language and mathematics is what creates the world around us. More specifically, these are the core foundations from which we can derive any of our thoughts, for it is hard to think without any words or structure. Without language, meaning is impossible to capture let alone transmit to another being. Without mathematics – I can’t even fathom a world where numbers, shapes, and ratios do not emerge simultaneously with our perception of the object. The world around us can be reduced to mathematical ratios and still make sense, just like how language enables us to define, thereby solidifying the existence of a thing.
Now an interesting move would be to examine the relationship of mathematics and language itself. Do they co-exist independently in their own right or are they dependent on one another? Normally one wouldn’t associate mathematics and language to be dependent on one another. You have kids – like me – who excel in language but are terrible in math and vice versa. And sometimes there are those lucky kids who are excellent at both.
I wish to posit a very thin hypothesis: there is a connection between language and mathematics as they both require a certain type of “thought structure” in our brains to be enacted. Consider for instance numbers. Mathematics is not possible without numbers, yet one can argue that numbers themselves constitute a certain language. They can be re-arranged or situated alone and still ring a bell. The same applies to equations as the variables can be moved around or left alone, but they will still continue to hold an influence. Maybe that’s it. Mathematics and language influence us because they are what enable us to influence our surroundings, namely the world. It makes sense that the tools we’re using to understand the world are indeed the ones that helped us create it in the first place.
The other easy similarity evident from the two is that they are both extremely hard! But perhaps it is by virtue of being hard that mathematics and language pushed our minds to grow and develop. Otherwise we still might be running around with clubs in our hand. Well, good food for thought. Maybe I ought to give math another chance.
ENTRY 2 - SEPTEMBER 2010
What difference does knowledge make? Does the right/wrongfulness of knowledge only become important if one presupposes a final end/answer? Yet what if there is no end? That cannot be. There is an end – we all die. Our death is our end. You cannot deny the end. And if there is an end, it is necessary that there must have been a beginning as well. Yet why does one have to think of a relationship between the beginning and the end? The classical response is that one necessitates the other, but is that really the case?
This notion of narrative that shapes the “I” from which we derive everything else out of is scary. Immediately the first slap is the fakeness/possibility of falsity that emerges. A story in the typical sense is created. Ayer wants to show that even though we are not writing or designing a plotline consciously, we are still writing our story. We create it and colour it with remnants of the past. History can be broken down into “his” story – very scary. Scariness evokes a natural response: fear. Yet the fear of this can never be overcome. You cannot deny or avoid this – that you are writing your story through existing.
Our desires for closures and lingering regrets reveal the strength of this notion of narrative. When we can justify or get “closure”, we somehow alter the final conclusion of the story as well. We change it. It’s the possibility of changing, thereby controlling, the end of your story that gives us peace. Our desire for control is indicative of this subliminal storytelling that we engage in. We need to be in control physically because we are aware that in our minds, we are the ones on top of the food chain. It is through our eyes/experience that any of this is even possible. See if it was not for me, I wouldn’t be glancing at this sheet of lined paper, seeing the pen etch out lines that we call words. I would not be hearing music right now if I did not exist. Sounds very egotistic but it stands true nonetheless.
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