pondering academia.

(another thing i meant to write, some days ago.)

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at some point i wanted to write about how mathematics compares and contrasts to science and the rest of academia.

needless to say, this 'magnum opus' was a flawed idea: too ambitious, if it was written the way i wanted it. all i wanted, i suppose, was to explain how i do my mathematics

(or rather, how i regularly fail at it)

.. and perhaps make it easier to understand or to sympathize with my working life, and the lives of my peers and colleagues.

like i said: too ambitious.

i think i'm resigned to be eternally misunderstood, but fair's fair; i don't often understand why other academics do what they do, and why it drives them.

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take scientists: they try to explain the phenomena of the world, which is fine. but it seems like messy work to me. i don't believe the world to be a simple place, and the complexity looks imposing enough to drive someone mad.

physics looks complicated, because now the mathematics is supposed to have physical meaning. it works at all scales and particles are fearsome, because macrocosmic intuition seems to be of no help whatsoever.

chemistry looks complicated, because it condenses to particles in physics, but it varies in scale and the magnitude of particles is boggling. this is the field which came up with avogadro's number, of all things!

biology looks complicated, because it condenses to chemistry and inherits all its complexities. moreover, the notion of feedback and nonlinear iteration is much more pronounced; the crux of things might be dna, rna, and protein synthesis, but to understand how it all works (or could work) is level with insanity.

ecology is complicated enough, where the scope varies from microscopic cells to ecosystems at a continental scale. social sciences look complicated, because human beings are erratic and hard to predict; an animal's behavior is hard enough to study in how it satisfies its basic needs, but human behavior ..

.. half the time, i don't know why i do what i do.
how is a scientist supposed to know?

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then there are the humanities. i view them as specialised fields of philosophy, motivated by the complexity of human culture.

they mystify me; i cannot grasp their spirit or center. upon meeting an academic in the humanities and being told what (s)he studies, it will make sense.

but as an aggregate of areas of study, i can only point and shrug. there is merit in it, and often beauty and aesthetic, but i cannot say why.

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.. and then, there is mathematics.