It Must Be Beautiful: The Wonder of Mathematics

Summer 2003

By Herbert Kohl

It Must be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science,ed. Graham Farmelo (New York: Granta Books, 2003).

Barrow, John D., The Constants of Nature (New York: Pantheon, 2002).

W. H. Auden's poem Septem-ber 1, 1939, was written while he was in New York during the Nazi Blitz of London. The last stanza reads:

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

We are in a similar mad and violent time. We need to show our affirming flames in the streets, in the classroom, and through the media. Those are the more obvious places. But there are smaller ways to keep the love of learning and life alive. The life of the mind has to prevail, and the idea that there are wonderful things to know and worlds to explore beyond the violence and the killing has to be sustained. This is a time for educators to be militant and active, but also for us to keep the spirit of inquiry alive.

In that context, I feel compelled to recommend books that have nothing to do with Iraq or the politics of hate perpetuated by our current national government. I recommend some wonderful books on the exploration of ideas in mathematics and physics, books that talk about the magic of structures in the world and of mysteries waiting to be explored and perhaps solved. These are books that do not directly relate to teaching or classroom activities but they are accessible and full of ideas and material that can easily be transformed into discovery in the classroom. After all, as teachers we are also translators and part of our craft is to shape complex content in ways that our students will be inspired to stretch out and think in ways they have never thought possible.

The first book is It Must be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science. It is a collection of essays by some of the finest science writers in the world on the equations, the surprising equalities such as E=mc 2 that are at the heart of modern science.

The second book is John Barrow's The Constants of Nature, which explores, in a delightful and illuminating way, constants such as pi and e and c that lie at the center of many of the equations explored in the first book.

These two books have provided me with a delightful diversion from my current obsession with opposing the war in Iraq and the future invasions we can expect from the U.S. government. There is a need, in hard times, to divert oneself on occasion and renew one�fs own work with young people through encountering new ideas ourselves. That is part of what Auden meant by being an affirming flame.

Kucinich on War

Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor education is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction. .

This administration is calling on Americans to support the troops. And how do they support the troops who have served? Veterans' health benefits cut. Six months wait to get medical assistance. Doubling of co-payments for prescrip-tion drugs. Seventeen thousand new nursing home beds are needed, yet it has cut 5,000 beds. No money in the budget for shelter for 250,000 homeless vet-erans. It has, however, asked for $108 million for new cemeteries. Support the troops, indeed.

- Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, at the California Democratic Convention, March 16, 2003.

Summer 2003