I am told that Saint Augustine was asked what God was doing before he created time and he responded by saying, “Creating hell for those who ask questions about such things.”
I am sure that someone more learned than I am can point me to a place where to find the chapter and verse on that and put it into the appropriate context for me. Let me say that I do agree with the point there are some things we probably shouldn’t know. I will also say right out front that there are some things I wish I didn’t know. Like Bob Seger said, “I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”
There are also some things we just can’t know and some things we just can’t do. I was reminded of this recently when a question came up on the trisection of an angle by using a compass and straight-edge alone.
I am going to spare you the nerdy details of this problem and refer you to my math blog redneckmath.blogspot.com if you are interested in such stuff. For this space, it is sufficient to say that solving this problem isn’t just hard, it is impossible. It really, truly can’t be done.
There are those folks, and I am sure you know them, where telling them something can’t be done is like waving a red flag in front of them. It is a challenge. They love the woman they can’t have. They pursue the prize that can’t be won.
Here’s the thing. Many of those who love the woman they can’t have do indeed wind up getting her in the end. And some who set out for the prize that can’t be won wind up claiming it. From my own little corner of the world, I once described a mathematical problem I was working on to an expert in my field and he said he didn’t think it could be solved, and I solved it anyway.
There is something to be said for being tenacious, dogged, and even stubborn, but there is a difference between the difficult and the impossible. Pursuing the first may lead us to heights of which we hadn’t even imagined, and pursuing the second may lead us to madness.
Indeed, there are some mathematical problems, the angle trisection problem among them, which are famous for drawing intelligent people into delusion. This part of the human constitution which leads us to do feats of daring can also lead to madness. Mathematical journals will no longer accept papers that purport to trisect an angle; they will not even comment on them. They just put the paper into the “round file” and put the problem-solver’s email address on the blocked list. Too many minds have been attracted to the problem like moths to a flame and like those moths they’ve eventually been burned.
Having issued warnings against pursing the impossible, let me say where there have been cases where men have pursued the mathematically impossible and have done great things. For over 1,000 years, mathematicians tried to prove the so-called parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry. This is impossible, but in the attempt to do the impossible they discovered Non-Euclidean Geometry.
But, in contrast to that, there are those who have, like Icarus, attempted to fly too high and have come crashing to the ground, or, worse yet, gone from one scheme to another attempting greatness, when they could have had something better, like goodness for instance. It is as if in their attempts to exalt themselves they are creating their own hell. I wonder if that was what Saint Augustine was trying to get at.
Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Mathematics, and Acting Chair of the Department of Chemistry at Pittsburg State University.
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