Reading between Hersh’s Lines

           When I saw the book’s cover, I thought it looked familiar. It’s like the photo took me back to years and years ago when I used to go to libraries a lot. It made me feel uneasy and yet I know why. It’s a sculpture named “Arabesque” by Robert Longhurst. Now arabesque would mean theatrically as a ballet position and while we’re not talking of classical entertainment, I’d like you to know that arabesque actually meant surface decorations of intertwining vines or foliage making rhythmic linear patterns. But what does Math has to do with arabesque? What does Hersh saw in this woodcarving that he chose it to be in the cover of his 1997 book?

            Obsolete as it may sounds, some of Hersh’s ideas enlighten me surprisingly as well. I already foreseen deeper explanations to be written by Hersh in this book not totally speaking of how mathematical concepts work, how they apply to many natural phenomena and how mathematical fields evolved and become unique amongst each other. The book actually talks of the truth on how mathematics purely in its own right works and grows and continues to keep people curious of its many illusions.

          I was mostly challenged to write a review of this surely widely acclaimed book for nine hundred words. Sadly, I might not complete so since I’m running out of time to pass this review. I’m not cramming. I literally enjoyed some of the historical texts by famous early mathematicians, the same ones I knew from BBC’s The Story of Maths. Hersh compiled their opinions and views and in his own words, put into paper what mathematics likes us to know. Or in this case, what Hersh really wanted us to know of the subject we normal students crammed about at a time this late at nearly midnight.

        Yes, I understood his faces of math. Formalism, Platonism and humanism are all different views regarding how math works. It states math is a meaningless game, a reality in a relationship with abstract thinking and a radical logic respectively. I could have made a comprehensive output out of all the richly poured thoughts from Hersh but then I realized that what matters is to answer the titular question, “What is Mathematics, really?”

          From what I have tried to read and understand by my maximum effort, I dare say that Hersh was trying to convince us that the way we apply mathematics today is not the same as the way mathematics was manipulated and used by earlier mathematicians. It was not solely to solve problems for practical and everyday situations. It was meant to understand the behavior and complexities behind the simplest things that exudes in amazing ways.

        Through God’s glory, we are able to know how this have been involved with Him and His ultimate power to create such marvelous things that mathematics never gave up to understand until today. I was inspired of how those ugly mathematical expressions I read from my textbooks went through a lot of historical critics and debates to be set as standards and serves as theorems or axioms we know today in order to prove more mathematical challenges that crossed any human mind.

        Today, I was happy meeting an awesome UP Mindanao Alumni named Ate May Anne if I’m not mistaken. She collectively points out that mathematics was not meant to be used purely in its own unique sense. It was made for marrying other significant fields that people of diverse expertise in various kinds of knowledge studied. She was right when she stated that mathematics do not exist for its own on its own. When we used this power with another powerful subject, we get more powerful results to solve and discover new things with powerful effects. 

          Like Hersh, she was right about mathematics not being really complicated by those long equations. Mathematics, as I understood now, is a growing change that we would surely call on to in times of trouble. It brought a gazillion of breakthroughs that lead to more breakthroughs all over the world. It is neither a puzzle nor a completed journey. It continues to bring questions for potential reasonable answers.  And yet, Hersh has brought me once again to read between the lines. 
          Misguided as I am before I learned all these brilliant ideas Hersh brought into page, I realized also that Math in a form we can truly see or touch is never definite. I remember my high school teacher who teaches Geometry that a line or a point he draw in a blackboard is never a point or a line in its own right but just a mere representation of them. Math is an abstract thinking. All that is kept in its majestic vaults of information all holds perfected perspectives that we cannot really exactly put or visualize exactly into physical means. It would always delight me how mathematicians or engineers or people so passionate about Math would be willingly have their lives spent on exploring Mathematics further and beyond the borders we set. There is much more in this present horizon. Like the arabesque, it would always be the connections among the mathematical concepts that gives this universal language its beauty. Name all the persons you can behind its colossal foundation and at this moment, I would name you just one. I give my respect and sincerest gratitude to Mr. Reuben Hersh.

       There are still many unsaid questions and unheard answers. Hersh keeps us for more unexpected reasoning. His lines weren't doubtful. He was sure of his work and I clapped for his dialogue with Laura. That's just an awesome instant discussion.