education
This is how experience works, it settles around the self like a sediment, and the self, as the possibilities open to it increase in number, becomes more and more difficult to nail down: the wisest person knows that ‘I’ is nothing in itself. — Karl Ove Knausgård, Autumn
uncertainty
Science is a public good, but it's not democratic. Researchers and those who relay their messages to the public don’t always have a mutual understanding. A public message which contains uncertainty could seem ambiguous, even when it relies on a statistical scientific truth or on work in progress.
math
Mathematics without proof is just speculation, intuition, or hypothesis. Any result which is not supported through rigorous arguments simply doesn't exist. And still, there are proofs which many think are impossible, until someone completes them.
physics
A career in science means competition and collaboration almost equally. In a digitally-connected world, research is a global affair, most of the times. Here's a competition for young students which showcases the value of a community, and makes an effort to challenge them to read research papers.
complexity
Elegance and beauty of scientific and mathematical results are at times judged by the compact form they are presented in. Science looks for unifying theories, and new ideas are analyzed component-wise using models. The evolution of artificial intelligence brings an argument for complexity.
education
Young people read far less than previous generations, which affects both their understanding and expression. However, if we really strive for an authentic dialogue, another issue becomes clearer. They miss the experience of being listened to, a true informational and emotional exchange.
meta
Grim statistics show that younger people stopped reading. However, statistics are not prescriptive, and I believe that minorities are made of individuals. These are my thoughts to students and young people to make their voices heard.
A gamut of curiosity
What can we do in front of the increasing difficulty of mathematical and scientific problems? Axiomatization could be an answer, but not all theories could be turned into a deductive system. What’s more, in spite of the generality of one’s research, its personal impact could be devastating.
Physics and mathematics are commonly regarded as complicated domains of research. They are also exact. How could this be when at the heart of modern physics there’s Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and mathematics has been working with probabilities and complex systems for decades?
See through electrons, think quantumly, but be human in education. Three articles that sparked my interest recently.
Ancient Western spirituality and popular wisdom contain many numbers that have magical or symbolic meaning, such as 3, 5, 7, or 9. Indian scriptures of antiquity, however, are much more daring and precise. Would you believe in precisely 8,400,000 reincarnations?
Fictionalized biographies of great researchers explain through metaphors and symbols the amplitude of their work. Chilean writer Benjamín Labatut’s novels argue that the most powerful impact is on the minds of those luminaries.
Among pencils preferred by artists and ballpoint pens that just do their job, fountain pens have a special place in history. We may not know how many theorems were written with them, but there are some well documented connections between mathematicians and their fountain pens.
Put your memories in order but try to think correctly about history. Plus, the role of the observer in physics is made clear with the help of philosophy. Here are three articles that sparked my interest recently.
Along with education and experience, culture creates our entire worldview. Cultural nuances also induce biases, and sometimes, they could influence the way we see geometry or numbers.
Mathematics is largely the history of mathematical problems, but it also has a story that avoids equations, formulas, or theorems.
Sometimes, curiosity about the origin of a mathematical term becomes a search that spans centuries. Or it just ends with a joke. Either way, it could be more memorable than the equations it was meant to explain.
Here's for a new beginning!