Many go through life afraid of numbers and upset by numbers. They would rather amble along through life miscounting, miscalculating and, in general, mismanaging their worldly affairs than make friends with numbers.
Shakuntala DeviRead
What is mathematics? It is only a systematic effort of solving puzzles posed by nature.
Interpretation
Mathematics is a structured way of addressing the challenges and mysteries presented by the natural world.
Shakuntala Devi highlights that mathematics is not merely an abstract field, but a practical tool that helps us decode and understand the complexities of nature. By framing mathematics as a systematic effort in solving puzzles, she emphasizes its role in making sense of the world around us, thus showcasing its intrinsic connection to the natural phenomena we observe daily.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation about the importance of mathematics in science education.
Many go through life afraid of numbers and upset by numbers. They would rather amble along through life miscounting, miscalculating and, in general, mismanaging their worldly affairs than make friends with numbers.
Why do children dread mathematics? Because of the wrong approach. Because it is looked at as a subject.
People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.
It is astonishing that human brains, which evolved to cope with the everyday world, have been able to grasp the counterintuitive mysteries of the cosmos and the quantum.
I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a community can become so organized that they end up resembling, in effect, one big collective brain. Our own exploding population and communication technology are leading us that way.
Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition.
The scientist, by the very nature of his commitment, creates more and more questions, never fewer. Indeed the measure of our intellectual maturity, one philosopher suggests, is our capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better problems.
As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space.
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