Week 26: Why Creationism is Dumb

Why Creationism is Dumb
How multivariable calculus helps us cut through complexity, recognize universal patterns, and thus discover our own truths—and why this scares the Pope.  

I met up with a new client at Cafe Flore today. She's a grad student at Cal taking multivariable calculus (scary!) over the summer.

I warned her that my multivariable calculus was a bit rusty, that I might not always be able to speak from a position of authority, that our relationship might have to assume a more egalitarian form—that we might have to work through this together. 

She seemed okay with it. 

Today's lesson dealt with the concept of basis, which is just a fancy mathematical way of saying coordinate system, or to generalize even further—frame of reference.

In multivariable calculus, where you begin working in more than just one- or two- or even three dimensions, a basis helps you make sense of a quantitative world that extends beyond the realm of sensory experience. 

I think NYU Professor Morris Kline (1908 - 1992) put it best:

"No one can visualize a four-dimensional, non-Euclidean world, but those who insist on visualizing the concepts with which science and mathematics now deal are still in the dark ages of their intellectual development. Almost since the beginning of work with numbers, mathematicians have carried on algebraic reasoning that is independent of sense experience. Today they consciously construct and apply geometries that exist only in human brains and that were never meant to be visualized."

In one of her problems, my client was given 7 different vectors (think of an arrow), each of varying magnitude and orientation, and then asked to find a basis. 

I explained to my client that the 7 different vectors were like sets of unidentified fingerprints lifted from a crime scene: one from the bedroom doorknob, two from a champagne flute, several taken from a bloody butcher knife...and so on.

To proceed with the investigation, she needed to determine if those 7 sets of fingerprints belonged to 7 different suspects, or if really there were only 1 or 2 or 3 unique suspects.

It was up to my client to eliminate redundant sets of fingerprints (i.e. those belonging to the same person) until only a unique set remained: to find the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The problem reminded me of a Star Trek episode, “The Measure of a Man” (TNG: 2x09). In it, Captain Picard offers this closing argument in the trial over Commander Data’s status as a Federation Citizen:

"Your honor, the courtroom is a crucible; in it, we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a purer product: the truth, for all time."

To solve this problem, my client needed to find a basis—a frame of reference—that would allow her to cut through the complexity and see fundamental truths, to "burn away irrelevancies" until she was left with a purer product.  

And so she did.

She used the tools of multivariable calculus to slice away at those 7 random vectors, cutting through the redundancies, the extensions, the overlaps—the linear combinations—until only 3 remained, each pointing in a unique "direction."  

Out of a dense fuzz of complexity, a simple pattern of only 3 variables emerged. Here was the basis, the coordinate system, the frame of reference: the truth, for all time. 

The discovery is so spiritually uplifting that Pope Joseph Ratzinger himself is roused from his transcendent slumber and, in nothing more than his pointy Prada shoes, quickly issues a papal bull accusing multivariable calculus of molesting little children.   


The full text of Theodore P. Olson's Captain Jean-luc Picard's speech:

"Your honor, the courtroom is a crucible; in it, we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a purer product: the truth, for all time. Now sooner or later, this man [Commander Maddox]—or others like him—will succeed in replicating Commander Data. The decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are; what he is destined to be. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom: expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him [Commander Data] – and all who will come after him – to servitude and slavery? Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life: well, there it sits! Waiting." 

Week 22: Don’t Know Why [I Didn’t Come]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elijah / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Don't Know Why [I Didn't Come]
There is something remarkably transcendent about the fact that we speak so many different "languages" but still end up saying the exact same thing.  

From Week 21: 

All my revulsion over literal interpretations of religious texts the world over, and the mental slavery such readings impose; all my contempt for a “people’s movement” that perpetuates the superficial form of marriage over the real tradition of love, simply because “that is how it has always been;” all the weight of the world comes into sharp focus over the head of an unsuspecting 8 year old boy…who promptly bursts into flames and dies a shrieking heat-death.

From Theodore B. Olson, representing the LGBT community in the trial over their fundamental right to choose who they want to marry: 

The latest words from the...proponents [of Proposition 8 are], "We don't know. We don't know whether there is going to be any harm [in allowing same-sex marriage]."

[I would argue that] "we did it because we don't know" is the same as saying "we don't know why we did it."  And I would submit that "we've always done it that way," that "it's a traditional definition of marriage"...is the same [as saying] "because I say so."

From Jean-Luc Picard, representing Commander Data (an android) in the trial over his fundamental right to choose his own destiny:

"Commander Riker has dramatically demonstrated to this court that Lieutenant Commander Data is a machine. Do we deny that? No, because it is not relevant – we too are machines, just machines of a different type. Commander Riker has also reminded us that Lieutenant Commander Data was created by a human; do we deny that? No. Again it is not relevant. Children are created from the 'building blocks' of their parents' DNA. Are they property?

From Marilyn Manson:

Those who move beyond the album's title and the most blatant aspect of what I do, will then understand what I am trying to say.

From Vexen Crabtree, the minister of the London Church of Satan:

Any Satanists who actually worship the Devil, rather than revering Satan as an abstract value, are immature, unstable, and nothing to do with us.

Through which we can infer:

Any Christians who actually worship Christ, rather than revering Christ as an abstract value, are immature, unstable, and the reason why people like Becky Fisher (of Jesus Camp fame) should be jailed for pedophilia. 

A sentiment echoed by Origen Adamantius, an early Christian scholar and theologian; and Paul of Tarsus, the Apostle to the Gentiles:

Origen: Christ crucified is teaching for babes.

Paul: But when I become a mature man, I put away childish things.

Finally, from the lovely Emily Dickinson:

As by the dead we love to sit,

Become so wondrous dear,

As for the lost we grapple,

Though all the rest are here,--

In broken mathematics

We estimate our prize,

Vast, in its fading ratio,

To our penurious eyes!

Week 14: Carrying on a Conversation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedromourapinheiro/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

An educated populace finds common ground and moves forward; an uneducated populace, paralyzed by divisions, stagnates and dies. Our nation’s founders knew this.

Citizen: What kind of a government have you given us?

Benjamin Franklin: A Republic, madam, if you can hold on to it!

James Howard Kunstler, in his book “The Geography of Nowhere” noted:

"For [Thomas Jefferson], the temple represented the culture that had first conceived of democracy (Greece), and that which had first devised a republican form of government (Rome), and it carried for Jefferson deep associations with his own classical education and his feeling that a democratic republic could only flourish if its citizens were educated.”

My heat transfer professor, Ralph Greif, once said to me:

Don’t worry that you’re not learning how to do or build anything. You’ll have plenty of time for that later. That’s what graduate school is for. That’s the easy stuff. Right now, focus on your literature classes, your social sciences. Relish your humanities—that’s what an education is about. 

Which reminded me of a soul-tingling dialogue between Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Ensign Wesley Crusher in the Star Trek episode Samaritan Snare (TNG 2x17):

Picard: Did you read that book I gave you?

Crusher: Some of it

Picard: That's reassuring.

Crusher: I just don’t have much time.

Picard: There's no greater challenge than the study of philosophy.

Crusher: Well, William James won't be on my Starfleet exam.

Picard: Important things never will be. Anyone can be trained in the mechanics and the piloting of a starship—

Crusher: but Starfleet Academy—

Picard: —takes more. Open your mind to the past—art, history, philosophy—and all this may mean something. 

In the midst of lectures, midterms, finals and projects—it is easy for the goal of education to get lost in the process of education: it is easy to mistake going to school with getting an education.

When we condition ourselves to think that learning only happens in school, we close our minds to so much more.

For me, once I realized that it was education for the sake of education, and not education for the sake of a job; once I realized to look beyond the specialized knowledge of an engineering education to see the universal truths driving all interaction—I was able to recognize my true, limitless potential.