A Journey To The Wonderland Of Math by Ajay Kumar Chaudhuri
I.Incredible Math.
If I ask, how is this world? Is it a beautiful place and worthy for living to us? Then, perhaps
there are a good number of people who may react in a loud chorus : No, currently the
world is a place where half of the population is without access to basic human
rights like food, water, clothing, home, medical care, basic education etc., etc.
Nowadays, this world is a place where billions starve despite there is enough
food for everyone. Again we are indiscriminately using up resources like fossil oil,coal, multitude of minerals etc, stored
beneath the flesh of our mother Earth, and
also we are robbing of her ornaments of greeneries of trees, plants,beautiful flora and lovely fauna for our extreme greed and fulfill our pleasure
and happiness. It’s a pity to say that we are engaged for decades in nuclear
arms race to destroy ourselves.
So, those pessimistic people
may point out to some more dark areas and negative ideas about this world, so
to say, of this human race. But the nature is not certainly responsible for the
misdeeds of ours. We may and we can rectify our mistakes right from now and may
hoping against hope that our future generations will make this world beautiful
and live worthy.
If we trained our mind to feel the nature
intimately, keep wide open our eyes to see it precisely, keep our ears ready to
hear its murmurs clearly and mingle ourselves with this very nature of which we
are inseparable part, then we may exclaim with boundless joy that we live in a
marvelous world full of beauty, of colours, of supreme fragrances, of amazing
patterns on the petals and forms of innumerable flowers, on leaves of the green
world, on the wings of numberless birds, insects, small creatures, animals and
needless to mention the amazing patterns on so many things and creatures.
Mother Nature painted most amazing pictures of abstract designs,intricate patterns,exotic colours, mind boggling fragrances.Look meticulously at the colours of orchids,the swirls of rose petals,the colourful delicate design of a peacock`s tail,dots on a mighty cheetah or majestic giraffe, dazzling stripes on a zebra,the hurricane-like galaxy spirals in the night sky and many such wonders of nature around you. Artists, poets struggle hard to match these inimitable handiwork of nature and scientists try hard to unravel the mysteries behind them.
Gentle breeze
soothes our body as well as mind with motherly affection, brisk gales,
devastating storms, floods, mighty volcanoes, earthquakes give us the idea of
strength and power. Fountains, streams and rivers play fine eternal tunes to
our ears, the vast expanse of deep blue oceans shows us how to be broad in mind and how to instill deep love in heart.The lofty mountains teach us how to be firm, erect and upright in
thinking and also in life. So such wonderful place this world is!
Therefore barring those ideas of dark areas and negative thoughts of those people, I am confident that a good number of people are there who will say in reply to my earlier query, ‘yes this is a breathtakingly beautiful place'.
When the Sun light fades
after twilight, stars further than the edge of the imagination shimmer with a
sense of depth and space, our most distant ancestors, say, forty thousand
generations or so back, looked to the overhead dome far above, viz the sky at
night with utter bewilderment. They came to know through their experiences of
thousands and thousands of years that their lives were very much dependent not
only on the two brightest objects in the sky, the Sun and the Moon but also on
the twinkling specks of innumerable dots, the stars. In this way they had a
crude idea of today’s universe. But their vision about it was myopic. To their
thoughts Earth was the centre of the universe and all other heavenly bodies
were revolving around it, which was most apparently practical.
They tried to
unravel the mysteries of the universe. They were very much eager to know about
them, but they had no means to crack them. Nowadays we know much more about the
nature, this world and in a bigger sense of this vast universe than those of
our distant ancestors by inventing a powerful, elegant and effective tool which
is called “Science”. But again the magnificent palace of science with grandeur
and exotic beauty stands on the solid foundation of ideas. Yes, we call it
“Mathematics”.
Mathematics is not
only the main and very powerful driving force in each and every branch of science, but also pivotal
in regulating our everyday lives. It makes us methodical or systematic, makes
our lives orderly by preventing chaos.
It is imperative to say that certain qualities are nurtured by
Mathematics such as power of reasoning, creativity, abstract or spatial
thinking, critical thinking, problem solving ability and even effective
communication skills.
In fact,
Mathematics is the cradle of creation without which the world cannot move an inch. Be it a cook or a farmer, a
carpenter or a mechanic, a shop keeper or a doctor, an engineer, a scientist, a
musician or a magician, everyone needs math in their day-to-day lives. Even
insects use math in their everyday lives for existence. Snails make their
shells, spiders design their webs and bees build their hexagonal combs. There
are countless examples of mathematical patterns in nature’s fabric of which only a few we can grasp and the rest are obscured.
So, the most
appropriate answer to my query at the outset is: This world is beautifully
mathematical and also mathematically beautiful.
[To continue]
