Mathematics, Money and the Military in the Space Age: Financial Innovation and the New Profitability of Peace
After Henry Guy published the first iteration of the 59 or so visions in the Vision Project, I felt a seed of growth stirring in me to publish not just a revision [now nearly nine months later] but a quarterly revision - on the four cardinal calendrical points of the equinoxes and solstices: December 21, March 21, June 21, September 21. Here, then, is my first revision: written for the Winter solstice, 2006. True for three months only!
In accordance with policy I worked out at the University of Washington about businesses reviewing their mission statement quarterly. I felt that we could try this out as a potential policy for Henry’s selected visionaries.
Perhaps few would have the time or the inclination to do quarterly reviews of their views. But for me, after many years of working with the religious futurists movement developing our method, I felt that it is really vital as a part of our intellectual integrity that we regard our visions as tentative, hypothetical, vision-experiments. Although they may be of permanent worth, I see ours as needing to be reviewed in the light of current experiences and freshly available instruments of thought.
So I set down now my new vision of Mathematics, Money and the Military in the Space Age: Financial Innovation and the New Profitability of Peace.
The new vision calls for an immediate activation of a spiritual, moral or ethical counterpart to the International Mathematical Union (http://www.mathunion.org/) and the International Mathematical Congress: the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM). The next ICM will be held in Hyderabad, India, August 19-27, 2010.
For those who say there cannot be any connection between mathematics and ethics we say, "Please revise your epistemology in the light of such books as Mathematics–the Decline of Certainty by Morris Kline."
The idea of a “natural or” objective mathematics is dead with a stake through its heart. What is left in the spirit of ancient philosopher Protagoras [“man is the measure of all things”] is the idea of a statement of human need and a deployment of mathematical genius relative to that. To this end we will be working out of the Academy of Jerusalem and the World Network of Religious Futurists and Stuart C. Dodd Institute. We will be working the calendar year of 2007 on recruiting members for this new Moral Mathematics International Society.
This has a kinship of course with the “project” of International Mensa of which there are one hundred thousand members. But our code name for the moral counterpart to Mensa is Energeia.
Laboratory of Mathematical Inspiration
For the first time we will cause to converge the vision of secular and sacred chambers of mathematical inquiry. That is to say: we propose the use of innovative design principles for laboratories of mathematical education, learning, inspiration, invention and discovery, and computer science labs which are deeply harmonized with the vision of the temple with its mystical mathematics [Mystical Meaning in Sacred Western Architecture c. 1997 Callisto Radiant (T. Roberti)]. We will also follow the Vitruvius in giving the mathematical dimensions of the human body as a work of art.
Geometry as a Sacred Pursuit
Places of worship are adorned with symbols of devotion–sculptures and other artwork designed to teach doctrine while also putting the worshipper in the proper frame of mind for worship. The temple or church should impress the worshipper as a special place, a place ideal for contemplating mysteries and offering prayers to higher powers.
Thus architects have always placed special attention on incorporating sacred principles when designing temples or churches. These principles may manifest as proportions, shapes, or symmetries considered having special significance. For example, the geometric forms we consider basic, such as lines, squares, triangles, and circles, have carried sacred significance throughout the history of Western civilization. Such sacred proportions or shapes indicate to worshippers of all educational levels that they are in a place of worship. This is true even when the principles included in the design are esoteric, known only to a select group of people. Innate impact on the human observer is one of the reasons these geometric principles are considered powerful.
Geometry has held a special place in mysticism throughout the ages because it not only tangibly describes the shapes of nature, and of the human body, in a way that transcends words, but also because contemplation of geometric problems helps sharpen the mind. The study of mathematics, and geometry in particular, by priests was common in ancient Egypt, Babylon, India, Israel, China, and pre-Columbian Mexico. [http://members.aol.com/sabrin1315/arch.htm]
Mystical mathematics....snort! We must answer the question, of course, which is often put by the self-styled 'practical person,' which is this. "Why don’t you go out and help people instead of putting your head in the clouds in Cloud Cuckoo Land (as Socrates was lambasted in the play the Clouds by Aristophanes).
Our answer is that good mathematics, like good science, or good technology, or good leadership, potentiates our efforts to help people. Our mathematics help us with things like making clocks, designing compasses, developing fuel, achieving an economic living and so on.
All that we do in the laboratory of compassionate mathematics is designed to help the poor and the needy. Therefore in our chamber of mathematical inquiry we will have a virtual map of the world and in it a map showing the development of national mathematics curricula for each of the sovereign nations with whom we will be working.
Government Mathematics and Military Mathematics
Our revised vision calls for close working with national mathematical associations, and the training of government and military mathematicians in ethics and politics and spiritual reflection.
Here we have a genuinely original approach to the vexing problem of "Guns or Butter," with supposedly limited money in a government’s kitty. We also have a new approach to taxation and the cost effectiveness of the Pentagon.
In fact the ideal philosophy is a wonderful ground on which to meet military mathematicians and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of the United States. The meeting point of future mathematical science/art/culture is the pursuit of excellence in the analysis of efficiency. In a course I taught at the University of Washington on "Business Ethics and Social Responsibility," in its Business School, around seven years ago I coined the phrase E cubed=dollars infinite. E to the power of three [cubed]: The ethical is the economic is the excellent. It is the pursuit of excellence [=ethical, = economic] in military mathematics and in fiscal mathematics that holds the key to the proving of the value in the calendar year 2007 of our new face of mathematical excellence.
For this reason we are proposing in certain aspects of government think-tank work that there be whole divisions of mathematical invention and improvement.
Mathematical Genius and Variety of Genius
Our subject of mathematical excellence and its higher level points to the need for a systematic and persistent inquiry into mathematical genius.
I have become convinced, after sitting for a few decades at the feet of one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genius (Professor John Radford), that the time is right for a new paradigm in dealing with the subject. Our starting point is common sense reflections like, "Genius–you either got it or you don’t," or, "Genius is near to madness," and so on. But actually we can study genius not only in terms of its origins as in Terman et al.’s book Genetic Studies of Genius but in its varieties of manifestation.
Therefore I will be resuming in the calendar year 2007 the study of varieties of genius and their roots and branches. I look forward to this becoming a common cause of our colleagues–the ones who work in some of these 'stratospheric' levels of moral and political reflection and in circles of top level scientific investigation and Operations Research.
The Courageous Mathematician
I would like to address myself to the question of whether the study of mathematical excellence and the inspiration of mathematics, if that is possible, it is mainly something for the Semitic religions namely Christianity, Judaism and Islam. I ask that most definitely it is not. India has produced many mathematical geniuses and it is to India that I now turn in speaking about the statement in the Bhagavad-Gita, chapter 16, about the qualities of the man said about the divine birth. Courage is the first word listed in this chapter and it is to bring together brave mathematicians around the world that we must agree. To this end I will turn to my friend, Professor XYZ of the University of Allahabad, and see how we can work with him in due course with the education department of governments of the world’s largest democracy, Mother India. And with the Mayor of Hyderabad! at the next International Congress of Mathematicians.
UNESCO
Contemplation of mathematical excellence gives us the key to analyzing the future of excellence and efficiency in the management in the moral political and financial leadership of UNESCO.
The UNESCO phrase, "Education, science and culture," as a program of the United Nations is an important one. But in each case mathematical science, arts and reasoning give fuel, potency, direction, amplitude and the capacity to create wealth in each of these three divisions: "Education, science and culture". Therefore our vision includes the creation of a cadre of mathematical scientists and artists to report directly to the director general of UNESCO and to design programs of mathematical education and leadership for the present and future directors of UNESCO. For this and many other reasons the significance of science fiction, to stretch the imagination for advanced mathematical education and leadership, is clear. Please see my Temples of Tomorrow for a more complete explanation of the relevance of this branch of the imagination (that is, the science fiction).
Mystical Mathematics and Metamathematics
Contemplation of mathematical excellence–it inevitably points us to the realms of mathematical mysticism: which takes us to the thought of people like Dr. Yitzhaq Hayut-Man and John Michell. There is a sense in which all political mathematics terminates or fulfils its realms of thought in the design of temples, and in the explanation of the earth itself as a temple and indeed the "world as sacrament,"
(Alexander Schmemann): in the sense of the architectural principles best suited to worship and the descent of inspiration into the brain. And therefore our work must encompass the advancement of mystical mathematics and mathematical mysticism.
We should also mention the work of Tarski. His book deserves mentioning in this regard. [1983 (1956). Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, Corcoran, J., ed. Hackett. 1st edition edited and translated by J. H. Woodger, Oxford Uni. Press.]
The notion of metamathematics also points us to the idea of a hierarchy of meta-languages at first mentioned in perhaps Bertrand Russell’s foreword to the book by Ludwig Wittgenstein Tractatus logico-philosophicus.?
In our March 2007 revision we will publish a constitution/mission statement for the new International Mathematical Spiritual Society and some design notes for our temple of mathematical intelligence and genius.