Mathematics in

the Modern World

“Vignette from NATURE’S

NUMBERS of Ian Stewart”

By: Alegarbes , Jaya C.

BS Industrial Engineering 1

Submitted to: Mr. Maulana Salatun

 Stewart's goal in Nature's Numbers is to equip the reader with a
mathematician's eye for a sightseeing trip through the mathematical universe.
The interrelations of nature's patterns, structures, and processes form the
underlying theme of the book. Nobody doubts that nature provides numerous
examples of beautiful shapes and symmetries. Stewart argues, full circle, that
patterns of form and motion reveal deep regularities in the world around us:
sixfold symmetry of snowflakes led Kepler to conjecture that all matter is
composed of atoms; patterns of waves and dunes provide clues to the laws of
fluid flow; and tiger stripes and hyena spots provide a key to understanding the
processes of biological growth. These are just a few of the many fascinating
examples Stewart provides. Also explored are nature's most recently discovered
patterns, patterns in apparent randomness, and the resulting theories of chaos
and fractals.

Ian Stewart has put together a very interesting novel for those are
particularly intrigued by physics and also short delve into mathematics.
Professor Ian Stewart explains new and unsuspected structures in the world
around us.

"We live in a universe of patterns where every night the stars move in
circles across the sky."

This was taken from the first two lines of the book and what an opening
few lines they were. After reading those lines it was difficult not to be curious to
wonder what Mr. Stewart has to say for himself. The first chapter states the
uncontroversial idea that nature is full of patterns. It then leads on to
mathematics, linking the two aspects very nicely indeed. He shows a very
insightful idea in the second chapter. There is a diagram which shows a
computer model of the evolution of the human eye. There are in total 1829
steps, where each step in the computation corresponds to approximately 200
years of biological evolution. It is something I had previously never heard of.
About halfway through the book there is a chapter on broken symmetry. This
was very clear and well written and anyone could understand this section. He
talks about mirror images and tries to justify it with simple evidence. Towards
the end of the book there is a section which I found rather interesting. It was
the formation of a detached drop. It starts as a bulging droplet hanging from a
surface then producing a narrow neck and then eventually developed into a
spherical drop.

So much about for the whole book, now further detailed discussions will
be given on the next pages about my selected top three topics out of nine
chapters Ian Stewart had given in his book.

I. Chapter 8: DOES GOD PLAY DICE?

The chapter of “Does God play dice?” is an overall summary of what we
call the Mathematics of Chaos. Now what is chaos? Chaos theory usually
involves the study of a range of phenomena exhibiting a sensitive dependence
on initial conditions. From chaotic toys with randomly blinking lights to wisps
and eddies of cigarette smoke, chaotic behavior is generally irregular and
disorderly; other examples include weather patterns, certain neurological and
cardiac activity, the stock market, and certain electrical networks of
computers. Although chaos often seems totally ‘random’ and unpredictable, it
actually obeys strict mathematical rules deriving from equations that can be
formulated and studied. Today, there are several scientific fields devoted to the
study of how complicated behavior can arise in systems from simple rules and
how minute changes in the input of nonlinear systems can lead to large
differences in the output; such fields include chaos and cellular automated
theory.

II. Chapter 7: THE RHYTHM OF LIFE

To sum up, I think this chapter more like have presented the relation of
Mathematics through biological motion of legged organisms especially animals.
Most of this chapter is about gait analysis, a branch of mathematical biology
that grew up around the questions "How do animals move?" and "Why do they
move like that?" To introduce a little more variety, the rest is about rhythmic
patterns that occur in entire animal populations, one dramatic example being
the synchronized flashing of some species of fireflies, which is seen in some
regions of the Far East, including Thailand. Although biological interactions
that take place in individual animals are very different from those that take
place in populations of animals, there is an underlying mathematical unity,
and one of the messages of this chapter is that the same general mathematical
concepts can apply on many different levels and in many different things.
Nature respects this unity, and makes good use of it.

III. Chapter 4: THE CONSTANTS OF CHANGE

When delving into the chapter deeply, somehow it discusses a part of our
history where famous mathematicians and scientific discoverers and their
contributions were introduced and argued upon altogether (mostly Isaac
Newton’s contributions were demonstrated and were made as examples). It was
also highlighted that nature, the creation of higher beings, is by definition
perfect, and ideal forms are mathematical perfection, so of course the two go
together. And perfection was thought to be unblemished by change. And the
universe may appear to be a storm-tossed ocean of change, but Newton and
before him Galileo and Kepler, the giants upon whose shoulders he stood-
realized that change obeys rules. Not only can law and flux coexist, but law
generates flux. Today's emerging sciences of chaos and complexity supply the
missing converse: flux generates law. Further explanations proceeds to the
creation and uses of Calculus by giving diagrams that includes acceleration,
the sequence of velocities, and the likes.
How can we explain this constant that is hiding among the dynamic
variables? When all else is flux, why is the acceleration fixed? One attractive
explanation has two elements. The first is that the Earth must be pulling the
ball downward; that is, there is gravitational force that acts on the ball. It is
reasonable to expect this force to remain the same at different heights above
the ground. Indeed, we feel weight because gravity pulls our bodies downward,
and we still weigh the same if we stand at the top of a tall building. Of course,
this appeal to everyday observation does not tell us what happens if the
distance becomes sufficiently large-say the distance that separates the Moon
from the Earth. That's a different story, to which we shall return shortly.
The second element of the explanation is the real breakthrough. We have
a body moving under a constant downward force, and we observe that it
undergoes a constant downward acceleration. Suppose, for the sake of
argument, that the pull of gravity was a lot stronger: then we would expect the
downward acceleration to be a lot stronger, too. Without going to a heavy
planet, such as Jupiter, we can't test this idea, but it looks reasonable; and it's
equally reasonable to suppose that on Jupiter the downward acceleration
would again be constant-but a different constant from what it is here. The
simplest theory consistent with this mixture of real experiments and thought
experiments is that when a force acts on a body, the body experiences an
acceleration that is proportional to that force. And this is the essence of
Newton's law of motion. The only missing ingredients are the assumption that
this is always true, for all bodies and for all forces, whether or not the forces
remain constant; and the identification of the constant of proportionality as
being related to the mass of the body.
As further mathematical equations and issues were illustrated, I think
that this chapter has called upon a thing about God as also a reason for
mathematics. It has touched a part of the omnipresent being that although it
was already frequently known and said that nature is well-surrounded by
mathematics it does not suggest that nature is mathematics – that (as the
physicist Paul Dirac put it) "God is a mathematician." Maybe nature's patterns
and regularities have other origins; but, at the very least, mathematics is an
extremely effective way for human beings to come to grips with those patterns.