News Highlights
Author:
Dina Abou Salem,
Web Editor,
Office of Information and Public Relations,
da09@aub.edu.lb
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Sir Michael Atiyah lectures on the relationship of mind, matter, and mathematics
The American University of Beirut Center for Advanced Mathematical Sciences (CAMS) invited world renowned mathematician Sir Michael Atiyah, chair of CAMS International Advisory Committee, to give a public talk entitled "Mind, Matter, and Mathematics" on Monday October 27, 2008 at Issam Fares Hall.
In his talk, Atiyah examined the relation between the human mind and the external world and the way it has been studied by philosophers for centuries, notably by David Hume and Immanuel Kant. "Galileo said that the book of nature was written in the language of mathematics, while Plato saw mathematics as a world of pure ideas," said Atiyah in his abstract for the talk. Atiyah also discussed the inter-relations of these topics in the light of modern scientific developments, including Darwinian evolution. |
 | Sir Michael: Galileo said that the book of nature was written in the language of mathematics
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"Among the fundamental questions asked in this area [relationship of mind, matter, and mathematics] are: What is the physical world? Is knowledge innate? What is mathematics? What is the relationship between mathematics and physics? What is the human dimension of it all?" said Atiyah.
After surveying the views of mathematics by ancient, medieval, and modern philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, Rene Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, David Hume, Bertrand Russel, and Immanuel Kant, Atiyah argued that mathematics offers a more in-depth view of the relationship between the external world and the human mind since it builds on its findings of the external world. |
"The interpretation of the physical world happens in the human mind," said Atiyah, who observed that it is thanks to mathematics that knowledge of the external world is possible.
"Mathematics lives in the collective mind of mankind...memory of mathematics is always there, not on paper, but brought down through generations. Also, many mathematical theorems exist but we select the ones that we regard as interesting," added Atiyah. |
Atiyah argued that in selecting the theorems we find interesting "we are using our free will, and therefore, my view of invention versus discovery lies in the fact that people find facts and our minds organize them."
When alluding to the relationship of mathematics and physics Atiyah said that "mathematics is extracted from the physical world but refined by the human mind and then employed at the physical world in ways that are useful to it." |
Atiyah believed that science and mathematics are human activities, and that mathematics has evolved to understand the outside world and is the secret weapon man uses to survive. He concluded that it is thanks to mathematics that man is able to ask new philosophical questions. "Mathematicians took the role of philosophers, but I want to bring the philosophers back in. I hope someday we will be able to explain mathematics in a philosophical way using philosophical methods," said Atiyah.
Sir Michael Atiyah has been described as one of the greatest living mathematicians. In 2004, Atiyah shared the second Abel Prize---widely recognized as equivalent to the Nobel Prize---with Isadore Singer for the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem, an achievement that the Norwegian Academy of Science hailed as "one of the great landmarks of 20th century mathematics." |
He served as president of the Royal Society from 1990-95. He has received numerous honors throughout a long and particularly distinguished career including a Fields Medal in 1966, the Feltrinelli Prize in 1981, the King Faisal International Prize for Science in 1987, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1993.
Sir Michael chairs the CAMS International Advisory Committee, which counsels the AUB president and the director of CAMS on scientific policy and programs. |
Sir Michael Atiyah, who was knighted by the British Queen Elizabeth II in 1983 for his mathematical and academic breakthroughs, was awarded an AUB honorary doctorate in 2004. And in 2007 AUB announced the establishment of the Michael Atiyah Chair in Mathematical Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which was made possible by a $2 million pledge by the Simons Foundation.
As for CAMS, whose current director is AUB professor of physics Wafic Sabra, it was founded in 1999 through the efforts of an international group of scientists with the primary goal of becoming the premier center of excellence for research in the mathematical sciences in the Middle East. CAMS strives to create opportunities for top-quality research and teaching, and encourages academic collaboration and interdisciplinary research at AUB and in the region. |
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