Math Was Not As Absolute As You Thought

The mathematical novel: "A Certain Ambiguity" tells us the story of Ravi Kapoor as he reminisces about his past quite thoroughly. It starts with a simple gift that first stimulated his mathematical interest- a calculator. It was given by his grandfather who happens to be a brilliant mathematician. They work up with some tricks regarding prime numbers and find beauty in it. Unfortunately this was Ravi’s last memories with his Bauji, Vijay Sahni. All he had left was money to ensure his future in a good university and his grandfather’s legacy.

Next, Ravi gets to Stanford University not exactly sure of what to make of his life in the future. Until a professor, Nico, came along and sparked his interest in math much like how his Bauji did. So he joins this class: “Thinking about Infinity”. From here on we sit in together with the other characters in various discussions about infinity. There’s Peter, Ravi’s roommate, straight-A student ; Claire, a gardener who happens to be inclined with math and is Ravi’s love interest; Adin, a philosophy student who seeks for something absolute. They started with Zeno’s paradox about the running man who runs on an infinite distance. I can’t really elaborate on it but I must say, the book did a good job of doing that. Shortly after this, Ravi finds out that his grandfather had been imprisoned without his family’s knowledge. And he is eager to find out why.

Ravi unravels the mystery of his Bauji’s imprisonment that it was because of blasphemy. All of this while his infinity class continues. They discuss further about Cantor's theory of transfinite cardinals, Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms of set theory and the independence of the Continuum Hypothesis. We also eavesdrop on the axiomatic method of mathematics and Euclidean geometry through Mr. Sahni and the Judge’s conversations.

This book is highly mathematical but interestingly written in bits that make sense in its own right. It is closely-knit to philosophy and religion, which bothered me somehow. Especially with the line: “Christians are people who gave up on reason”. Quite heartbreaking, really. But moving on, the book makes its reader realize that math isn’t a doorway to absolute truth. Gödel's Theorem proves that there will always be statements which are impossible to prove or disprove.

This is all a rough plot of the journey but in the end we find out that Ravi pursued a career in mathematics where he can “nurture this sense of order and connectedness” as his favourite professor, Nico, advised him. We are also given the understanding that he married Claire.

I think this book has achieved what it wanted: to give its readers an investigation on the nature of truth, faith and certainty in math, religion and life. It is also perhaps the first time that I actually came to understand, in the minutest way, the idea of infinity. This book gives fascinating arguments with mathematical proofs which are surprisingly made easy. I would have to give it to the authors that this is a job well done. Because sewing mathematics, philosophy, religion, and a bit of romance in a novel probably isn’t the easiest thing to do. And you come up with the thought that, mathematics can be a certain ambiguity.