B"H

THE IMPERATIVE OF MORAL MATHEMATICS

The following was published in the fourth edition of Mensa Israel’s monthly magazine Illui, which came out in January 2004.

It is gratifying to see that a vanguard of intrepid mathematicians and physicists in this generation are now “heretical” enough to question the Orthodoxy of math, i.e., that the laws of math are a priori, devoid of any and all moral content, immutable, exist everywhere in the universe under any and all conditions, and were discovered by Human kind - in short sacrosanct. Had the systems of math, logic and nascent physics developed in ancient cultures in any way contradicted or contravened the power and grandiose plans of the rulers who commissioned the intellectuals of their day to do their work, the systems would have been buried unceremoniously, together with those who devised them. It is gratifying to see that they recognize that math is not just a language, but is predicated upon the language, and therefore the thought patterns of those who apply the principles.

I posit that: The mathematical system and logical systems accepted in the world today are, as were the cultures that bequeathed them to us, tyrannical. This and more, the ancients did not discover the mathematical principles and logical principles that govern the physical universe. Rather, being predisposed to tyranny and arbitrary laws, they invented a mathematical system and logical systems that were in keeping with their Weltanschauung. Simply put, people who hold that those who have “more” are greater than those who have “less” will create systems of thought that include such principles as: two is always, and under all conditions, greater than one. The person who has two grams of gold is richer than, therefore greater than, the person who has one and certainly in a far more enviable state than those who have none, i.e., those who may be enslaved.

There is an undeniable correlation between the mathematics we have inherited and the hierarchical social structures we have inherited, both of which seem so natural to us that few of us question the very foundations of either of them.

Both our mathematics and our social structures demand that we accept certain laws as inviolable and true under any and all circumstances. Both our mathematics and our social structures are based on the “reality” that there is information that only a privileged few are privy to. Finally, and most importantly, a math that posits that two is always, and under every and all condition greater than one leads to two barbaric conclusions: The person who has two dollars has more, i.e., is greater than the person who has one and the mob (sometimes called the majority when applied to those who have accepted the culture’s given way of thinking) rules.

The Egyptians Pharaohs amassed and centralized power; it stands to reason, then, that they built monuments to themselves in the shape of isosceles triangles, the apex of which, of course, is the god-king. Our geometry has been inherited from them.

By thinking of human society differently we make the logical jump to a more benign, less structured, less rigid math and logic that is filled with more possibility. Using these more elastic mathematical and logical principles we create a universe that is less dictatorial for ourselves and one another. In turn, the universe that more liberal math will describe will be supplanted with another, or others, far freer still.

The Hebrew language is an alternative

linguistic/mathematical/moral system. Please God, we will demonstrate what Hebrew math is and make some of the implications of it clear.