Our next meeting is on
Thursday 10th July at the normal time of 7.00pm at the White Rock
Hotel
The subject this month will be: The magic of numbers
If the Scientific Method is a key to the
philosophy of Humanism,
and Maths is the
language of Science,
then numbers are the
alphabet of maths.
Numbers have the capacity to reveal a type of truth that is
independent of opinion, even overwhelming conventional wisdoms. To make the
point we will start with a short quiz on the facts that ‘everybody knows’ and
compare them to the actual facts… then a gallop through some interesting stuff
about numbers:
• The
history of numbers and the resulting change in human
understanding
o Roman numerals that
could not be manipulated,
o The invention of
zero and negative numbers
o The concept of
infinity
o The maths concept of
‘i’ (square root of -1)
• Universal
constants like Pi that a clever alien would be able to recognise and understand
even though there are no other reference points.
• A
definition of what numbers are…Bertrand Russell’s ‘Principia
Mathematica’
• New
facilities for making maths easy to access and might lift the fear for future
generations – Khan academy and Wolfram
• And fun
things to do with numbers
I know a lot of people find the whole concept of maths
totally off-putting and scary. But I think it is like any other language; once
you understand a little bit of the vocabulary, you might end up loving the
simplicity and poetry of its better writers.
