From fish to infinity

Or, how Sesame Street saves us once again!

Please check out the NY Times column by Steven Strogatz examining concepts of math, from preschool on up. The column debuted today, and I thank my aspiring physics scholar of a cousin for sending me the tip! It all starts somewhere ...

Actually, what I found most intriguing in this debut column is the double-sided concept of abstract reality he addresses. Numbers allow us to deal with and engage with reality more efficiently, but, as he writes, "at a serious cost of abstraction." Yet, this very leap of abstraction leads us to the concept of, say, addition, which also helps us engage with reality more efficiently. Like most of the things I find cognitively magical, the powers of the abstract reality of numbers seems to function, in my thinking, like a double-helix: two seemingly opposite forces, bound together in relation with each other by the concrete connections we can observe, and thus forever influential on each other.

But don't let me put too many thoughts in your head. Read it for yourself!