Curious view towards Mathematics
“Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.”-Albert Einstein
Curiosity is a nature in every living being but not everyone has same level of curiosity. Ever felt been extremely curious? high curiosity is not born with you and does not stay same till your death, it can be nurtured and grown or completely diminished. There is always someone staying inside your mind who keeps asking “why?”, always feed that person and his hunger would keep increasing or would die.
Many great scientists Sir Isaac Newton, Prof. Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman…. wait there is no one great or small in field of science everyone contributes their share as they are supposed to, so “famous scientists” would be better word! So many famous scientists who were assumed to be god-gifted were just the product of high curiosity. Sir Isaac Newton saw himself as a kid playing on the sea shore who is exploring the sea of truth and knowledge of universe, Prof Albert Einstein said “I am neither special nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious ” and Richard Feynman:
Highly curious people always try to understand a thing as much as possible at that instant, which interests them the most and so for some people it can be politics and for others it may be astronomy. The scientists we talked earlier had deep interest towards science of their respective field and they always tried to question themselves instead of just studying for the sake of. They never limited their thoughts for the term exams and kept on exploring the deep ocean and so they have contributed so much to the field and got celebrated.
So how can curiosity be enhanced? Curiosity is again born, it is nurtured always but it depends if your grow it or diminish it. The view towards mathematics of many people is just that it is about numbers and few weird symbols which we have nothing to do with in our lives but it is not the case. Mathematics rightly viewed is highest form of logic and truth without any flaw. Some people like me are highly curious for mathematics and would spends hours on understanding a single statement or theorem, proving it in several different ways, making out meaningful inferences from the result and much more. When you truly get curious for mathematics you would even start questioning your own thoughts about the subject and doubt your own logic. Let me tell you for an instance a statement- “0<1" now majority of the readers would not question this just because it is “logical” and “true” in their own sense but their would even be some readers who might be thinking “is this correct?” I myself once got confused why this is true? Now dont give me a answer in form of apples or bananas and tell 1 apple is more then 0 apple, and still I would ask why and remain confused. This is what curiosity does it would force me to dive deep into the matter till the time I get my answer and end up satisfied and in the process of finding my answers I might have created a new kind of logic or mathematics or way of thinking by method.
Hope you liked reading this article and I would continue on this topic later on. Till the time you can read my another article The World of Mathematics and if you want to continue to be with me you can follow me here Jyotiraditya Jadhav. Thank You!
