Why Learn Math?
Jesus must have been a difficult fellow with whom to have a conversation. In the gospels' accounts of Him, He responds to questions with parables about goats and vineyards and bridegrooms. I can only imagine the circuitous answer I might get from Him if He were the concierge at a hotel and I was urgently looking for the bathroom. Blessed is he who wets his pants waiting for the Lord to get to the point.
His disciples asked him why he spoke in riddles to people. In His own defense, Jesus said this about why he spoke in parables: "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing, they may not see, and hearing, they may not hear." (Luke 8:10)
Galileo wrote about 1500 years later: "Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe."
And yet many of us still ask why Nature has chosen to reveal herself to us in the confounding and convoluted language of mathematics.
His disciples asked him why he spoke in riddles to people. In His own defense, Jesus said this about why he spoke in parables: "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but for others they are in parables, so that seeing, they may not see, and hearing, they may not hear." (Luke 8:10)
Galileo wrote about 1500 years later: "Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe."
And yet many of us still ask why Nature has chosen to reveal herself to us in the confounding and convoluted language of mathematics.