Mathematics is art

In Art, man reveals himself and not his objects. - Rabindranath Tagore

Photo by Saad Ahmad on Unsplash

Numbers are my eldest son’s thing. He was nine when he said to me after a day out that he wanted to tell me about something about numbers. I was busy with some nonsense housework, loading the dishwasher, cleaning the sink, getting clothes in the wash and wiping away the dirt that our shoes had brought into our hallway.

“Mum, I’ve made a discovery. It’s about numbers.”

“Sure sweetheart, maybe you can tell me later.” I knew that this was going to require all my concentration. Mathematics is the one thing I cannot multi-task with.

When I settled down “later”, I had forgotten my promise to hear him out, but he had not.

“Mum, so can I tell you about my discovery?”

I had no way to avoid it. I was going to have to listen. And it was about maths. Of all things. I took a deep breath and said, “Sure, go for it.”

“Well, mum, if you square a number and take the number one below the squared number, it will always be the product of the numbers either side of the original square root.”

“Ok, give me an example.” Another way of saying I have no idea what he is talking about.

“Well, say if you take 64, the square root of that number is 8. If you take one number below 64, that is 63. It is the product of the numbers either side of 8, so 7 times 9 is 63. That works for all numbers, Mum. Take any number at all and it works.”

“Ok, give me another example.” I am clearly not quite there yet.

“Take 100, the square root is 10. If you take a number either side of 10, so 9 and 11 and multiply them, the answer will be one less than 100, so 99.”

And he went on to give me much more complicated examples too. The rest of us would have to use a calculator for those more complex calculations, but he was right about the pattern – it applied into infinity.

“That is beautiful. How beautiful.”

I was floored but I should have been used to it. I remembered that my son could see patterns in numbers that others could not. It was his thing – none of us had taught him how to do this or even that such patterns might exist. When he was three, he could tell us how many minutes we had if it was say 3.42pm and we were going to go out at 4.30pm: “Mummy, we have 48 minutes to get ready.” Or at age four, he was able to add two three-digit numbers in his head faster than my husband or me: “Mummy I think 282 plus 439 is 721. Is that right, Mummy? Is that right, Mummy?”

It was the same with anything that involved numbers or strategy. Lap times of Formula 1 drivers. Cricket batting statistics. Relative Scrabble scores when we play together (and he usually wins). Chess. But it was this most recent ‘discovery’ that struck me. I do not usually find maths beautiful. For me, it is word patterns that fascinate, poetry that is art, that lifts me to a higher realm with its symmetry and resonance. My son’s discovery may not have been an original one of course but it was nevertheless his own. A discovery of a mathematical pattern so very neat in its replication into infinity. It struck me also that there must be infinite patterns in the universe if only our eyes and minds are open to them. How much are we missing because we do not see these larger patterns? Are random happenings, like random numbers, in fact discrete parts of a larger arrangement that, put together, are like music?

My thoughts continued to hop on like a string of musical notes. Perhaps numbers were more like art than I thought. For just as we look at an individual number as meaningless, a streak of paint is of itself of little importance – even something which mars. But if we stand back and that streak of paint is but one on a larger canvas, it could be a small part of a larger and beautiful painting. Not an ugly or unimportant streak, but one which lifts our mind first to the totality of the image depicted and then, if we can accede to it, to the thought and concept lying beyond the image itself.

I would come to think of my life in this way. Loss and challenge would undoubtedly form part of my journey and I would mostly be too close to see the patterns and, in ignorance of them, deeply mourn events in my life. But, in time, with acceptance of the difficulties, I would come to see them as part of a greater pattern. Incomprehensible up close but beautiful against the vast canvas of the universe and our journey within it. During the rare moments that I would be able to stand back from the losses, I would see them against the bigger journey of my life and occasionally lift my mind to the meaning that lies beyond the journey itself.

And so I wondered if my son’s insistence that I listen to his theory and my taking the time to do just that were in themselves not random at all. His ‘discovery’ led to my own. I wondered, in fact, if his very place in my life was also not random at all and that we had been put together so that we could keep ‘discovering’ alongside each other. Discoveries about maths, about love. Discoveries of our talents and strengths. Discoveries also of our needs and vulnerabilities. But discovery mostly of the fact that we all belong together – like numbers placed next to each other to form a larger pattern or like individual colours contributing their shades to the canvas of life in which we find ourselves – meaningless alone and also completely meaningful together.

It was on this day that, thanks to my eldest son, I understood that mathematics is art and that art is life itself.