Primed for the Journey

We've been told to "expect the unexpected" along the journey. Such is the nature of pilgrimage. And my first "unexpected" came last week, when Dr. Tom Polaski told me he had a book for my travels. Great, what is it?

Before I tell you, a little background. Tom and I were classmates at Furman, but in our studies while he was majoring in math I was only plodding through "Math 16: Math for non-science majors." (This is the collegiate equivalent of, "If you put $2.74 worth of gas in your Harley, and give the clerk a five dollar bill, how much change should you get back?") I had taken the five math courses offered in my four years of high school, but high school calculus, now LOOOOONG, forgotten, was the apex of my mathematical career. (I'm still pretty good at getting the right amount of change back.)

So, when Tom shows up with The Millenium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time, I didn't know whether to be honored that the good math professor thought highly enough of my mind to expect that I could actually understand this stuff (which I can't, Tom!), or just laugh and say thanks. I laughed and said thanks.

Now let me tell you what I've learned so far. Which has very little to do with math.

The first problem is the 140-year-old conundrum named for Bernard Reimann, who first stated it. It has something to do with determining the density of prime numbers (which apparently get more sparse the higher you count them). Apparently there are significant implications for computers and internet usage in the "proving" of The Reimann Hypothesis. (Which also comes with a $1,000,000 prize from the Clay Mathematics Institue. Their money is safe with me, but you are welcome to buy the book and give it your best shot!)

In the Reimann chapter, written for the lay person (???) the author reviews: counting numbers (a really good start for a Math 16 whiz), which are now called the "natural" numbers... fractions, called "rational" numbers... all the other numbers on the number line (which are... exactly... what!?), called "real" numbers... and then, if "real" numbers aren't unreal enough, there are the "imaginary" numbers, and, if this is not complex enough, you've also got your "complex" numbers.

OK... so here's the point (for a pastor on pilgrimage)... in his method for solving any cubic equation, the Italian mathematician, Girolamo Cardano, discovered that to get to a final result one has to journey through several intermediate steps, which involve numbers that are not "real." Though the final result is (an actual, real number).

That which does not exist (an imaginary number)... helps a mathematician find a solution, which does exist (a real number, in a real world). Are you with me?

And...with the Reimann Hypothesis itself: his hypothesis about prime numbers has been used (however mathematicians use these things!) for more than a century, though it has never been proven. Of it, Keith Devlin, the author, says, "Suspecting that it is true, mathematicians have been investigating its consequences for years."

Do you see where a pastor is going with this?

Devlin opens up his book with this disturbing quotation from Landon Clay (the benefactor of the $1 million prize): "Curiosity is part of human nature. Unfortunately, the established religions no longer provide the answers that are satisfactory, and that translates into a need for certainty and truth. And that is what makes mathematics work, makes people commit their lives to it. It is the desire for truth and the response to the beauty and elegance of mathematics that drives mathematicians."

The disdain for religion that many people have comes from religion's inability to "prove" itself. God? What God? Where, God? Show me God... and I will believe.

So, why does mathematics deserve a "bye" in the proof department? If mathematicians can use numbers that are "imaginary" to yield a real result, and the "consequences" of a hypothesis that is "unproven" are practical and well-known... why can I not believe, likewise, in a God who cannot be proven -- even while I work out the very practical, effective, "consequences" in my life?

Such is the nature of faith. To work out the consequences of a God who is beyond proof. Of the mathematician. And even the "proof" of the believer.

Thanks, Tom, for priming me to see this God, the "beauty and elegance" of faith... even in that which is "imaginary" along this life's journey.

r