Mathematics has a real moral basis?

[catsmate]

Are petunias the new kittens?

Douglas Adams reference

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.

Oh, no, not again!

Exactly.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Greetings, fellow sceptics,

I am naturally delighted that so many of you have noticed me. It is even possible that you may able to help. The curse of sceptics, however - and as some of you will certainly be aware – is hubris: when pride in being a sceptic becomes an obstacle to reason. How many of you, for example, might once have dismissed reports that stones sometimes fall out of a clear blue sky?
Being educated more in science than the arts, then becoming a soldier before I was twenty, graduating, still in the army, as an engineer, did nothing persuade me that I was missing anything in religion that was not either wishful thinking or deliberate - and usually cynical - fraud.
Then, aged 29 - a fateful age - I offended the then British government very seriously by writing and circulating a paper arguing that the attempt to use the army to suppress political protest in Northern Ireland would not reduce violence but could only provoke more.
In 1971 this was rank heresy. The British government was totally convinced that military force was necessary. I expected to be court-martialled, but at least I would then be able to explain my reasons.
Instead, nothing happened. The army general whom I had been briefing for the previous six months replied quite affably, but described my argument as ‘banal’. And that was all.
A few weeks later I was invited to attend a military hospital in the far south of England for hearing tests. Shooting had in fact left me, like many soldiers, fairly deaf. This was well known. Now the very senior army doctor who interviewed me so cheerfully suggested that my young wife – we had been married less than a year - ‘take a little holiday with you as well.’
A staff car, with two drivers for the long journey, arrived next day.
Some hours later, as we arrived, I noticed that this hospital was the chief military psychiatric hospital.
Oh, well, I thought, hearing problems are essentially nervous.
My naivety lasted only another five minutes: when one of my two drivers, a corporal, followed me into reception and was asked by the sergeant, who had just saluted me: “Have you got your patient’s papers, Corporal!’
Ah, how clever.
Some weeks later I asked the hospital’s deputy-director, a full colonel, what would he have done if at this point I had slugged the sergeant, then the corporal, pulled the actual driver from the car and made a bid for freedom.
By this time, the colonel had certainly saved my sanity and had, arguably, saved the rest of my life. Now he only shrugged, “I knew as soon as I met you that some bloody fool had made a mistake. But, if you had done that, we would have warned the MPs and the civil police, and they would have brought you back.”
But that first meeting had only confirmed that I had abruptly lost all the protection that the usual presumption of sanity provides outside the walls of psychiatric hospitals; that I had lost all the weak but the indispensable defence of rank, social status, independence: in short, I had lost everything that assures anyone of their identity together with their freedom.
And I was angry.
Angry because had been so confident; so trusting of social forms; so sure of those whom I had trusted.
One of the latter was then the most influential political journalist in Britain. I had boundless admiration for his skill as a writer and his moral profundity. Much later the colonel told me that he had taken my paper into his London club, had dropped it in the lap of one of the senior military members, and had told him: “This is from one of your people. You had better fix him.”
Some years later, he confirmed this by letter, without any apology, telling me: “But it doesn’t seem to have done you any harm.”
Now, as I stared my own reflection in the mirror on my officers’ quarters bedroom, I was only vaguely aware of the potential harm he had set in train. This was very real. In our final interview the colonel told me of his anger at being ordered to begin the most potentially damaging psychiatric treatment as soon as I arrived. Only his professional integrity and his own observation had held him back. A lesser many would have obeyed the government.
Alone and deeply distrustful, even of him, I realised, as any sceptic should, that up to this moment I had always served a far higher level of intelligence than my own: that I was not independent, that I was its agent.
Without hesitation, I dropped to my knees, put my hands together as I had as a child, and said aloud, and angrily: “I need some help.”
The effect of this was utterly astonishing.
It was also, of course, physically impossible.
The whole is recorded in far more detail than I can give here in the chapter entitled ‘Source’ in my website.
Please read it, as sceptics, and tell me what you would have done if this had been you.
Please also look for my book on Amazon entitled 473959; and also for the (appallingly amateurish) YouTube series I have made called Messianic Mathematics, in which I explain why the simple word ‘messiah’ deserves a more thoughtful response than the automatic knee-jerk response that some of my American friends warned me would be sadly inevitable from ‘conservative Christians’.
I responded to their good intentions that was that I have not the least interest in persuading conservative Christians, or conservative Muslims, or conservative Hindu, etc, etc, of anything at all.
They are conservatives. I rather hoped to discourage their interest.
But should there be such a response from the Randi Forum?
First investigate: stones sometimes do fall from the sky.
Colin Hannaford, z.Zt. Lich, Oberhessen, Germany

I think this guy had more imagination than you.

 

[DallasDad]

Wow, that's a seriously twisted dude.

 

[Colin Hannaford]

Mathematics has a moral basis: my mistake.

Dear Children,

Oh dear, my mistake. I apologise. I thought I would find you an interesting, thoughtful, even scholarly company. Instead of which most of you seem to think that being intelligent means being as rude as possible with the least number of words. Well, duh! as my friend Lisa might say. It ain't so, people. Good-bye.

 

[timhau]

Instead of which most of you seem to think that being intelligent means being as rude as possible with the least number of words.

Is that worse than being incomprehensible with a huge number of words?

 

[Almo]

Greetings, fellow sceptics,

<wall of text>

First step: learn to intersperse carriage-returns into your post so they are easier to read. Nobody wants to wade through a wall of text. It's true that yours isn't as bad as it could be, but it's still very hard to read.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Dear Children,

Oh dear, my mistake. I apologise. I thought I would find you an interesting, thoughtful, even scholarly company. Instead of which most of you seem to think that being intelligent means being as rude as possible with the least number of words. Well, duh! as my friend Lisa might say. It ain't so, people. Good-bye.

Passive aggressive ad hom. Yeah, we've seen that here a lot too.

Don't let the door hit ya on the way out.

 

[Ladewig]

Dear Children,

Oh dear, my mistake. I apologise. I thought I would find you an interesting, thoughtful, even scholarly company. Instead of which most of you seem to think that being intelligent means being as rude as possible with the least number of words. Well, duh! as my friend Lisa might say. It ain't so, people. Good-bye.

There is rudeness on the JREF. I cannot deny that.

The best way to deal with it is to provide evidence of your claims. In fact, that's what you want to lead with. If you come in talking about your book and YouTube videos we have to assume that you are here to increase hits on your video. If you come in talking about your life history, then we cannot evaluate your claim. Always lead with the evidence.


Oh, and goodbye to you too.

 

[Colin Hannaford]

The moral basis of mathematics

Dear Almo and Ladewig,

Thank you both for your thoughtful response. Since I grew up accustomed to barrack-room repartee, I should not have allowed myself to be provoked. I apologise for my quick temper.
I have also tried to hit Carriage Return more often.
You asked for my reason for beginning as I have.
When I was a boy I used to enjoy those cartoons in which Road-Runner managed to persuade Coyote to run off a cliff, after which, for a just a few eye-popping moments, Coyote realised that he is running on air, until gravity takes over.
I thought to begin by reporting the occasion when my own scepticism found a deeper reality to explore, and to ask how other sceptics might imagine responding to the same experience.
Of course, I believe I know how a conventional sceptic might respond.
Some time ago, for example, I enjoyed the privilege of meeting Professor Richard Dawkins at Oxford seminar.
At seventy he is a slim, still handsome, and notably courteous.
After I had introduced myself (in Oxford only tenured academics savage each other), I began: “Dr Dawkins, may I comment that your explanations of the evolution of human consciousness are not complete?”
He frowned. “Why is that?”
“It is because you make no mention of theophanies.”
His frown deepened. “What are they?”
“The appearances of God to men.”
Now he was prepared to be brusque. He almost turned away. “But they are just fairy-stories,” he replied.
This was not unexpected. I persisted. “Well, they may be fairy-stories. But they have been taken seriously by very many cultures for thousands of years.”
I had lost his interest. He gave a wave of his hand, as if to say: ‘You can believe what you believe, Sunshine. I am Oxford University’s Professor of the Public Understanding of Science of, and I deal only with the public’s understanding of science!”
This is entirely good and proper: except that the public understanding of science is not the whole of science; the whole of science is not the whole of reality, and there is far more magic in our world - the title of his latest book is ‘The Magic of Reality’ – for science to discover.
You asked me to describe, briefly, the rest of the story.
It was immediately evident to me that no modern society – and, within them, no modern religion – is any longer prepared to treat God as a universally active force. Scepticism, to this degree, has been profoundly successful.
But what if scepticism itself might be understood as an evidence of that force? I had become – more out of economic necessity than anything else – a mathematics teacher.
Eventually - after some years - I realised that mathematics SHOULD encourage youngsters to accept no argument individually until it has satisfied them sceptically: and, further, that the arguments which pass their individual test must also be acceptable to others equally. In essence no-one is to be treated as other than an intellectual equal.
From this insight, it requires no more than some cursory historical research to discover that our modern forms of ‘mathematical arguments’ were first developed, not to do mathematics, but in order that the early Greeks might engage in constructive, critical, receptive discourse: democratically.
It is no longer necessary to posit the existence of God. For this, of course, there will never be any universally satisfactory evidence.
The fairy-stories can remain fairy-stories.
But mathematics is the basis of all science.
“So,” I learnt to ask my class of eager eleven year-olds on their first day with me, “you have been working with arithmetic, for the past six years? With what? With numbers? Good. Will someone please remind us: what is a number?”
I would find - always - that no-one would know. It had not occurred to anyone to ask or to discuss it with them.
With all the awesome authority invested in me by society, I could easily continue to lead them into our ‘grown-up’ world in which most people learn to do and to believe as they are told, who rarely dare to question or to doubt, and can only hope, most tragically of all, that if everyone is as well-intentioned and honest as they are, nothing can go wrong: not fundamentally. Ozymandias must have thought the same.
The rest of my first very short book – its title is 473959 - is about using mathematics to preserve children’s innocence and honesty whilst encouraging them to like and to trust each other. This is actually very easy. I am working on a longer book.
I thank you both most sincerely for your interest. I hope others may now join in.

Colin Hannaford.

 

[kowalskil]

Don't forget that you can probably tell your browser to zoom in on a page.

I spent a few (zoomed in) minutes on his site.

He is quite earnest. He has, I think, a few interesting points to make that probably get overwhelmed by his special interests and religious beliefs.

He is in favor of teaching mathematics by the Socratic method. This is his big thing. He has a variety of materials on this available for sale. I would find some of this interesting to read (for a time, at least).

He believes that teaching mathematics by the Socratic method can instil in students several traits (e.g. honest self-criticism and reflection) that are conducive to a good life and an good society. He sees the teaching of mathematics by the Socratic method as the basis of a functioning democracy.

I'm not sure if he thinks that there is anything about mathematics that instils in students traits he would regard as moral - I think it is mostly about the method. Then, again, he may regard mathematics as a subject particularly well suited to being taught by the Socratic method.

Not as woo as I first feared, but I really spent only about five minutes on his site, so who knows what else there may be.

I do not think that mathematics is particular in terms of the Socratic method. I used it in teaching physics. One cannot cover a lot material by using this method. But using it occasionally produced good results.

 

[I Ratant]

The moral base for math is to keep business transactions correct.
When folks can add, deceiving on quantities becomes more difficult.

 

[Ladewig]

In essence no-one is to be treated as other than an intellectual equal.

If you'll pardon me for focusing on only one small part of your post, then I'd like to talk about this assertion.

You probably are not familiar with the American South. There are large swaths of people who eschew intellectualism. Their religious fundamentalist beliefs led them to reject the theory of evolution and any branch of science that claims the Earth is more than 6000 years old. You have raised an interesting philosophical question: is it necessary to treat people as intellectual equals if those people actively and repeatedly choose not be intellectual equals.

I think the answer is probably yes, but I suspect some posters might (persuasively) argue otherwise.

sorry for the derail.

 

[Ladewig]

As for the lengthy post, I am still unsure of your exact point. Is it simply: teaching math (and other elementary school subjects) in the proper manner will produce graduates who are better prepared to function in a complex, twenty-first century democracy?