My article this week is entitled Can zombies write mathematical poetry? Mathematical poetry as a model for humanistic mathematics, written by Gizem Karaali and published in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts in 2014.
Karaali begins by discussing the idea that mathematics is creative,
and that although mathematicians and math teachers generally believe this to be
true, much of the general public would likely disagree. She also suggests that mathematics is a great
example of what makes something human since it involves cognition, consciousness,
and creativity, with these three things being “the three main ingredients of
what makes our species special”.
She next describes her personal experiences writing poetry,
which she started dabbling in while working as an engineer in her hometown of
Istanbul. Karaali points out that she chose
to write poetry in her first language, Turkish, but when doing math always used
English and therefore at first viewed these two pursuits as two separate
worlds.
STOP#1: Different Languages for Different Activities
I found it interesting that the author engaged in different pursuits using different languages, and even mentioned that she felt uneasy or uncomfortable doing math in Turkish or poetry in English. As someone who is not fluent enough in a second language to be comfortable thinking in that language, I wonder if this is a common phenomenon? I also wonder how much of an effect this has on connecting (or not being able to connect) ideas or concepts that one is thinking of using the different languages they know.
Karaali next discusses the term humanistic mathematics,
which she loosely defines as “scholarship or any form of inquiry that studies
the human face of mathematics”. This has
become one of her main areas of academic interest, with her and a number of
colleagues creating the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (JHM) in 2011. Her
work with JHM increased her exposure to mathematical poetry, and lead her to
participate in a creative writing workshop, to organize poetry readings with
mathematical themes, and finally to teach university courses (for non-math students) examining the
intersection of mathematics and poetry, the first of which she called ‘Can
Zombies Do Math?’.
Below are a few excepts of poetry included in the
article. The poem without an author
listed was written by Karaali.
STOP#2 – What Exactly is Mathematical Poetry?
I guess this article challenged my expectations around mathematical poetry. Before reading this article, I thought mathematical poetry would have mathematics embedded within it, such as a haiku-like format but instead of 5-7-5 the syllables per line would be the digits of pi or Fibonacci numbers, or perhaps would have a rhyme scheme or meter that was mathematically interesting somehow, or even involve graphs or equations – something where you need to understand some mathematical concept to “get” the poetry. The examples in the article seem to be just poems describing one’s experience with mathematics, which personally I find much less interesting than the other possibilities I mentioned earlier. Needing to understand some mathematics to understand the poetry is what I’m more interested in, and if I was doing a poetry activity in my math class, I would certainly want it to reference a specific math concept.
I personally enjoy math/science/nerd comics, especially Zach Weinersmith’s daily Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (check it out if you don’t know it!). He does lots of graph jokes, which I find really great since they combine mathematics with humor, social/political commentary, pop culture, and more. Below are a few examples.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/food
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-01-26
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-24
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-05-17
Hi Reed,
ReplyDeleteI too, expected the mathematical poetry to be more 'mathematical' as you describe, and less about one's experience with mathematics. I feel like lots of this poetry would be negative (as people tend to often complain about math being hard or difficult or not enjoying it).
The connections between poetry, rhyme, meter, patterns and mathematics are endless. I feel like there is so much here to explore. Like you, I would much rather have my students write a poem either with inherent mathematical properties or about a certain mathematical concept.
I appreciate the graphs you included from Zach Weinersmith’s. I am going to have to check more of these out!
Hi Reed,
ReplyDeleteYour reflections about language and how it leads to differing areas of understanding has overlaps with my post's reflections about language and words as placeholders for things. I think the language(s) we use fundamentally shapes the way we are able to think and the kind of knowledge we have access to. In this way, knowing multiple languages can be a kind of superpower that reaches towards a meta-awareness about the limits and parameters of knowing (for context: I used to know more languages as a child but I'm only really fluent in English now).
It's interesting that the author's experience was that the languages created a barrier between the different ways of thinking (math and poetry). I wonder how much this was due to the cultural separation that has been created between the subjects, and the extent to which this is also prevalent in education in Turkey. I'm curious what happened when she began to bridge the two - did one language take over? Or did she develop her ease of thinking in both languages?
The bridging makes me think about the concept of code-switching, or alternating between different languages or dialects in the same sentence or conversation - something that multilingual people and people crossing cultures do often do as they speak. For example, this has been common among Black communities in North America as a form of self-protection, and across the Global South as a result of western imperialism and colonialism. Code-switching brings the possibilities of different ways of speaking/knowing together and allows for greater expressiveness, conveyance of ideas, and meeting people where they are at.
I think I agree that I like those poems where you need to do a bit of math to unlock the meaning. It's more like doing a puzzle - one of the great qualities of math! Thanks for sharing the works of Zach Weinersmith, I will definitely check him out.