Tag: literature

A Short Piece of Writing on the Storm

On By Michael FlemingIn Learning and Growth, Poetry, SpiritualityLeave a comment

We find ourselves navigating difficult times. For some, the waters are new. For others, the waters are new, yet the waves are familiar.

There’s a storm, starboard side. Our ship sails amok.

For some, there’s an albatross. For others, there’s a stern where they are calm and asleep, and they dream, and they are not afraid. For some, there is literature and poetry. And when we write, we are relaxed in the stern. And when we read, we read this:

When adversity threatens to paralyze us, we need to reassert control by finding a new direction in which to invest psychic energy, a direction that lies outside the reach of external forces. When every aspiration is frustrated, a person still must seek a meaningful goal around which to organize the self. Then, even though that person is objectively a slave, subjectively he is free.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

And we are free.

Reflecting on Insights from a Pure Mathematician

On By Michael FlemingIn Learning and Growth, Mathematics and ComputingLeave a comment

It is ironic that after years of studying graduate-level mathematics, it was a piece of literature I read during my studies that had the most profound influence on me. Mind you, it was written by a mathematician, but that doesn’t matter.

G. H. Hardy was arguably one of the greatest pure mathematicians of all time. He is portrayed by Jeremy Irons in The Man Who Knew Infinity, a movie that depicts his relationship with the mathematical genius Ramanujan from India.

Hardy’s A Mathematician’s Apology was published in 1940. His poetic and philosophical prose draws me in. In Apology, Hardy poses two questions that lead to the justification of his chosen profession:

A man who sets out to justify his existence and his activities has to distinguish two different questions. The first is whether the work which he does is worth doing; and the second is why he does it, whatever its value may be.

Hardy reflects on his life as a mathematician and concludes one, his work is valuable and two, he is good at it. Hey, if he had been a better cricket player, he may have chosen to be a professional cricketer.

And when others question my work, I reflect on Hardy’s morsels. I have no doubt of the answer to the first question, and I’m pretty sure I suck at baseball.