(Copyright Allan Adler 2000)
On Monday, June 19, 2000, a local Bowling Green, KY, newspaper, the Daily News, published an article about Mathematical Culture on pp.1B-2B, with the title "Group motto easy as 1,2,3. Organization blends numbers and culture". My interview with the author, Alyssa Harvey, was cordial and the article friendly and supportive. I want, above all, to express my appreciation for her hard work and positive sentiments. At the same time, I feel that some of the statements in the article are not accurate and I wish to correct them or in some cases to supplement them.
Let me begin by filling one lacuna left by the article, namely my qualifications in mathematics. I have a Ph.D. in mathematics and I am active in research in pure mathematics, which I publish in respectable journals. I have also written a book which was published in 1996 by Springer Verlag, entitled Moduli of Abelian Varieties; my coauthor was S. Ramanan, a world renowned mathematician at Tata Institute in Mumbai, India.
In view of this, it is something of an understatement to describe mathematics as "one of my favorite pastimes". It is actually my profession and my main area of competence. However, I also have a lot of other interests. One of them is a concept I like to call "non-bureaucratic education" and I view this recent experiment with the discussion group Mathematical Culture from that standpoint. My other interests include languages, literature, art, musical composition, sciences and history. It is these other interests that give me the breadth that makes it possible to run a group such as Mathematical Culture at a high level.
I should also explain that, although Western Kentucky University is the primary employer of research mathematicians in the Bowling Green area, I have no affiliation whatsoever with WKU and my plans for mathematical activities are in no way sponsored by WKU. I'm doing it entirely on my own. Having clarified that, let me try to correct the sentence near the end of the article which, in reference to some lectures I plan to give on some advanced topics in mathematics, quotes me as saying, "This is nothing you'll see in universities or schools." That is incorrect and what I actually said was that I am trying not to duplicate anything that is taught at Western Kentucky University. That is actually an easy goal to meet, since Western doesn't have many lectures on advanced topics in mathematics. But many of the advanced topics I will lecture on are taught at better universities.
With these remarks, I hope I have clarified and corrected the main errors and inaccuracies of the Daily News article. For the sake of completeness, I would like to mention some of the minor ones:
(1) The statement, "People think they have to know what they are talking about (to be in the group). They don't have to know what they are talking about. I think that's one of the reasons why they find it interesting", is close to what I said but not quite right. I said that in practically every situation where people encounter math, they have to know what they are talking about and many people find that intimidating. In this group they don't have to know what they are talking about when they discuss mathematics. I never said that my approach worked; it is an experiment in progress.
(2) The following paragraph quotes me nearly accurately. One point where it is inaccurate is that it quotes me as saying, "I want people to see that math is not a temporary aberration that takes place in schools." My position is as follows: when adults show kids, by their example, that intellectual activity is only for kids in school and not for adults, they are sending a more powerful message to kids against education than anything they actually tell kids in favor of it. One way to correct that is for adults to engage in intellectual activity of all kinds for its own sake and to do so publicly. It is necessary for adults to do it on their own, without the sponsorship of a school or university, because that is what perfects the message that this is an adult activity and not merely a school function.
(3) The following paragraph quotes me, in paraphrase, as saying that Mathematical Culture looks at math from an artistic standpoint by studying literature that involves math in some way. That is correct. I would merely like to elaborate on that point. There are three ways, basically, that one can appreciate math. One is the way a mathematician appreciates it, by understanding it. Another is the way math is often justified to the lay person, namely that math is useful. But I wanted to emphasize that math can also be found in great literature, in music, in film and in other arts. I think it is important to emphasize the kinship of mathematics with the arts and literature, because too much emphasis only on the utility of mathematics leads some people to think that mathematics cannot be justified unless it is useful in some way. Similarly, too much emphasis on the relevance of mathematical ability to successful careers or ordinary employment leads some people to think that mathematics cannot be justified unless it is financially rewarded. The truth, however,is that no matter how useless or unprofitable some piece of mathematics might be, if it is a great intellectual achievement, that is reason enough to study it, and no mathematician should ever have to apologize for that. In short, great mathematics has the same justification that great art and literature have. Be that as it may, in Mathematical Culture, when we examine a piece of literature involving mathematics, we may note the presence of the mathematics but we emphasize the literature for its own sake and on its own terms. We don't beat people over the head with the math just because it is there. For example, in the case of Finnegans Wake, the main goal was to teach people how to read Finnegans Wake, not how to understand the construction of an equilateral triangle.
(4) In regard to Finnegans Wake, there are no errors immediately apparent to me about it in the article, but the specific connection with mathematics is omitted. It is not the fact that the book goes in a circle but the fact that it contains, around p.293, a diagram and discussion of the construction of an equilateral triangle as found in the proof of the first proposition in Book I of Euclid's Elements.
(5) Finally, the address of this website did not fit entirely on one line in the article, so that last w in wwwwwww was widowed on the next line, making it seem that the address was http://www.accessky.net/wwwwww instead of http://www.accessky.net/wwwwwww. This could perhaps have been avoided by omitting the http:// at the beginning.
Comments and questions may be directed to:
Allan Adler