When maths doesn’t seem to add up

Results arrived at mathematically are valuable in the everyday world, of course, and one could say these outcomes are true. But one has to be wary about exaggerating the similarity between the model and the material. One isn’t always aware of that line until it’s crossed.

As a literary person primarily aligned with the humanities rather than the sciences, primarily ‘right-brained’ as opposed to ‘left-brained’, I’ve been disappointed from the outset in the notion that mathematics describes the universe and, more recently, in the claim that our entire universe might be a ‘mathematical object’.

One reason for this disappointment might be the tyrannical maths teacher I had at school in my formative years — a wizened, dwarfish old man with knobbly arthritic hands who created a fear and loathing of the subject, especially algebra, for which I had little aptitude (I’ve no idea if the equations in the Pixabay image above mean anything). Instead, I excelled at English language and literature.

Admittedly, some might think that such an experience would have a lifelong influence — the ‘teacher wound’, in psychological terms — setting me against maths forever. But after I left school I tutored myself into becoming quite good with numbers. Yet I came to realise that there are no numbers in reality, only things that can be described by numbers.