Introduction
Mathematics is the body of knowledge centered on concepts such as space, quantity, structure, and change; Mathematics also covers all the academic disciplines that study these concepts.
The works contained in this essay seek to establish the role of Individuals and culture in the growth and development of mathematics. It seeks to answer the question of “what matters most, the individual or the culture?” “What is the net result of having a great mathematician without a community to endorse and support his work?” “On the other hand, what are the net results of having a community without creative mathematicians”?
The Individual and Culture
Being a human activity, Mathematics profits greatly from individual intellect but succeeds only with the implicit endorsement of the wider society. Mathematics is humanistic in nature and scientific in its technological application. Individual Genius act as the source of discovery, or the medium through which facts are invented. But on the other hand, from society’s point of view, we realize that discovery and inventions are brought about by the economic and social forces and that any discovery or invention by a particular individual could still have been discovered or invented by any one of a hundred other mathematicians.
Communities stagnate without the individual’s input and impulses, but it’s a well-known fact that the Individual impulse dies away without the compassion of society. This is because of the way the community decides to access an individual work. A mathematician’s work may be dismissed by society without even the slightest examination. Some other mathematician’s works are difficult to understand and interpret, and therefore the society just decides to ignore them completely. Other mathematical inventions are of great importance, but in essence, society may view the work as orthodox, leading to a boycott or completely ignore such work.
There are other instances where the mainstream mathematician society ignores the work of individual mathematicians simply because they lack interest in that individual work or because they choose to look at an invention from a completely different angle. In the final analysis, it’s hard for the individual to know what is right, what is acknowledged, and what the system for acknowledging.
Another biased view by society to an individual is that the mathematical life of a mathematician is relatively short. People are made to believe that mathematical work rarely improves after the age of thirty. That little will ever be accomplished after this age and that the level of accomplishment continually falls with each decade. But there are many cases of mathematicians continuing to do unsurpassed research past the age of forty; a pointing example is Paul Levy, one of the inventors of modern probability Theory, who was close to fifty years when he first plunged into this field. He continued doing original and profound work into his sixties.
Conclusion
Both the individual and culture, in this case, represented by the society, have done a profound work in the growth of mathematics. Mathematician work will not see the light of the day without the support of society. Again the society won’t grow without individual input. When individuals present their inventions to society, the mainstream mathematicians and society should take time to scrutinize the work and point out the errors where they occur. The mathematician recognizes the errors and acknowledged them, and the situation was dealt with accordingly. This concerted effort has ensured and will continue to ensure original and unparallel invention in mathematics.
Reference
Bush, William S. (2003) Journal, Understanding mathematics and culture, Georgia University press Greece Mathematics. Web.
Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh, and Elena A. Marchisotto, (1995) The mathematical experience, Birkhauser publishers, United States.
R. L. Wilder (1950) Cultural basis of Mathematics, Cambridge university press, United Kingdom.