11/16/2018 A Mathematician’s Apology – Prabhu – Medium

Prabhu
Sep 2, 2017 · 4 min read

A Mathematician’s Apology
Re blogged here from my erstwhile and now inactive blog space

Reading G.H.Hardy’s ‘A Mathematician’s Apology’, I couldn’t help

myself feel a little unworthy (will elucidate later). Hardy puts forth
tting arguments for mathematics and exalts the act of pursuing
mathematics for the sake of mathematics and without being worried
about its implications. The treatise was written when he was past his
prime. For Hardy, mathematics is a young man’s game and he must
have been prodded to write about mathematics for he was believer in
doing things and not talk about it. His words might sound
condescending but we get to get his mind as he expounds his reasons in
the writing.

The function of a mathematician is to do something,

to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and
not to talk about what he or other mathematicians
have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters
despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or
mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there
is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more
justi able, than that of the men who make for the
men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation,
is work for second-rate minds.

He alludes to the fact the mathematics in its purest form is nothing

short of or even better than poetic lines of great depth. And his
con dence in his own craft is telling and I couldn’t help nodding
positively reading the following lines –

I should say at once that my defense of mathematics

will be a defense of myself, and that my apology is
bound to be to some extent egotistical. I should not
think it worthwhile to apologize for my subject if I

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regarded myself as one of its failures. Some egotism

of this sort is inevitable, and I do not feel that it really
needs justi cation. Good work is no done by
‘humble’ men.

Just like how a master poet playing with words brings forth great lines,
mathematicians are makers of patterns made of ideas, patterns that are
beautiful. He asserts that the patterns must be beautiful and if they
aren’t they are not worth pursuing. As examples of ideas that are simple
yet profound and possessing inherent beauty Hardy describes Euclid’s
proof of the existence of in nite primes and Pythagoras proof of
irrationality. One cannot disagree. Even a person with no practice in
mathematics can see the beauty of the proofs. I liked the lines that
Hardy uses why reductio ad absurdum is so appealing for
Mathematicians –

The proof is by reductio ad absurdum, and reductio

ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a
mathematician’s nest weapons. It is a far ner
gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may
o er the sacri ce of a pawn or even a piece, but a
mathematician o ers the game

The other aspect that Hardy argues and argues he does with rigor is the
di erence between pure mathematics and applied mathematics. Hardy
rates pure mathematics highly and takes comfort with the fact that his
and other realmathematician’s work nds no place in utility for
mankind. It is useless in making life better, yes, he argues, but at the
same time it does play no role in war as does the applied mathematics.

There is one purpose at any rate which the real

mathematics may serve in war. When the world is
mad, a mathematician may nd in mathematics an
incomparable anodyne. For mathematics is, of all the
arts and sciences, the most austere and the most
remote, and a mathematician should be of all men
the one who can most easily take refuge where, as
Bertrand Russell says, ‘one at least of our nobler

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impulses can best escape from the dreary exile of the

actual world.

Hardy must be forgiven for having not much foresight! His favourite
line of mathematics — Number Theory –plays a crucial role in
cryptography and other applications that do practical good as well as
evil. Hardy belabours to get the distinction between pure and applied
mathematics through and I found it at some places di cult to grasp the
gist. Some chapters are pending further reading for better
understanding.

Hardy ends the essays with one chapter which in substance touches the
life he lived as a mathematician. He considers his collaboration with
Littlewood and Ramanujan as his best works and his craft being bound
with them.

All my best work since then has been bound up with

theirs, and it is obvious that my association with
them was the decisive event of my life. I still say to
myself when I am depressed, and nd myself forced
to listen to pompous and tiresome people, ‘Well, I
have done one the thing you could never have done,
and that is to have collaborated with both Littlewood
and Ramanujan on something like equal terms.’

He makes a case for himself and rightly so by acknowledging that he

added something to knowledge (even if useless) and helped others do
the same.

Reading Hardy’s defense for mathematics and its craftsmen I rued how
wrong was it on my part for not taking mathematics seriously. Yes, I
knew that mathematics is an art. I could appreciate its beauty (I
despised shortening the subject to and calling it ‘Max’). But still didn’t
excel and pursue it. Unlike other art forms like poetry or painting many
of us have formal education for mathematics for many years. Still, I
failed in mastering the art thus wasting an opportunity. But one can
defend that software writing — beautiful software at that and
debugging software also to be an art though Hardy would not put
anything on par with mathematics! So, I at least have an opportunity by
means of my profession to ace in some form of art.

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