To start off, I am not a fan of
novels that long. Books of pages more than 250 don’t attract me that much. An
exception is when the plot is most interesting. The book “A Certain Ambiguity”
by Indian authors Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal was quite a good book. I
cannot believe I had spent my whole day reading it. At first I thought it was
another head spinning boring Math philosophy book. There I was wrong. Well, of
course it has the usual math concepts and a typical merge of philosophy, yet it
was made in a different way. It was inspiring. A Math novel. How had I appreciated
a “Math” novel?
It is
true that at the first part, you cannot resist to get your calculator out of
your bag (Jacinto,2014). Bauji had not only got his Ravi to be amazed by his
math magic. I had already tapped a lot of 6 digit numbers in my calculator. All
of which has ended to the 3 digit number I had thought of. And the fact that Ravi deduced the pattern and
the solution quickly was not as what I would have done. Oooh these math people.
Then the next thing I read, Bauji died. It was quick and dramatic. Well I
thought the “Bauji and Ravi” part will end like that. Good it had not. The
whole book is about the incorporation of Bauji in Ravi’s life and how he
influenced Ravi even though he is dead.
Ravi
was sent to a college in America where he had used Bauji’s given wealth for his
schooling. There he met friends and had taken a math class “Thinking about
Infinity” with Nico as the professor. He had taken the subject due to his
interest and his grandfather. After his death, Ravi was more connected and
inspired by his grandfather’s work. His mother had tried to persuade him to
move on. It was misunderstood, Ravi thinks himself as his grandfather.
At his
class, with Claire and Adin, I had also learned a lot. The concept of infinity
is most emphasized. By definition, infinite is endless, boundless, it is time,
it is space and generally, it is God himself. There is no exact or certain
fixed complete idea of infinity. It is an idea of ambiguity. Before, I just
thought of infinite as the biggest unending trail of numbers that is used to exaggerate
numbers a bit. Later on I realized a bigger and more complex definition of it.
Unlike finite numbers, infinite plus one or minus something will still be
infinite. Whatever number, be it multiplied by itself, will still yield
infinite. To say, it is invincible. The only person who completely understands infinity
is Georg Cantor. Cantor and his ideas were degraded and ignored by people. They
find it absurd and uncertain. And it is very unfortunate that people will only
realize the great works of a person after a very long time.
Not
only did Infinity have my attention, it is the Primes too. Claire’s analogy of
primes is odd and amazingly logical. It is like the Euclid’s 5th
postulate where either is acceptable and the other contradicts. I remember the variables
used: P as the largest prime number ad N is all primes multiplied. N+1 should
be a prime on the other hand, if P is the largest prime, it cannot be a prime.
The paradox of primes gives me the goose bumps. It just depends on how you look
at it. This kind of analogy is like the belief of creation or evolution. People
have different views on things they perceive. It is quite a fight. Mathematics
is all about proof of a certain thought as it bears truth. Mathematicians work
for proofs of their study and as much as possible they avoid axioms. However,
if they come to a point of paradox like what has existed in the analogy of
primes, they settle to axioms to avoid it.
The
complexity of Euclid’s 5th postulate is also a paradox.
Contradiction and acceptance both occurs at the same time. It is very
exhausting putting an effort on which weighs more to believe in one concept
over the other. I can’t say more of this anymore.
The
story also revolved on the law versus the belief. ‘Bauji’ is a prisoner held by
a blasphemy case. Him being an Indian, I also thought that he is much of a
religious person. Indian people are known for their devotion to their gods. It
is unusual that one can become an Atheist. But well, his devotion to knowledge,
logic and proofs through mathematics has turned him an Atheist. At his trial,
Judge Taylor had a long court conversation with Vijay Sahni (Bauji). The court
trial proceeded with violence-free and peaceful talk. Vijay explained with elegance his proposition
of mathematical ideas and had already influenced ad inspired the judge yet it
had still ended at his arrest and imprisonment due to state laws.
Vijay
is a mathematician worth praising as we had been inspired by Plato’s teachings.
He made mathematics define the object and language of reality. Human beings live
to do assumptions, rationalize, analyze and deduce facts gracefully. Thinking
logically upon things is what Vijay is trying to get our minds at. I strongly believe
in God and I am inspired by Vijay’s logic. It’s not much of a paradox.
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