I.A Journey To The Wonderland Of Math by Ajay Kumar Chaudhuri. by Ajay Kumar Chaudhuri.

 
              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.

            "Nature`s great book is written in mathematics"-----Galileo Galilei.                                                            

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