Snezana Lawrence - Mathematicians and Their Gods: Interactions Between Mathematics and Religious Beliefs

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Preface

The overlap between mathematics and theism may seem at first sight an unpromising topic for a book. But as the many contributors to this volume show, the intersection between the two provides fertile ground both for historians of mathematics and of theology, and for the interested general reader. The chapters have been written by a range of subject experts, who have given willingly of their time and their knowledge. They have also submitted with good humour and patience to our various editorial queries, suggestions, and proddings, and we thank them for their enthusiasm for, and commitment to, the project.

The chapters of the book are ordered broadly chronologically and thus the work can be read beginning with the Pythagoreans and then meandering through a range of times, places, and people, to end with Kurt Gdel. However, each chapter is independent of the others and so the reader can feel free to dip in to the book at whichever point he or she finds most interesting. Hopefully, such a reader will then be enticed into the other chapters.

As is noted in the introductory chapter, this book makes no attempt to be comprehensive. The most glaring omission is of Islamic mathematics, with the centre of gravity of the book being within the Christian West. The bias is benign and can be accounted for by the interests of the editors, and the desire to keep the scale of the book within manageable proportions. If there is a benefit of this bias, it is that it illustrates that even within such a restricted field of study the interactions between religion and mathematics are surprisingly rich.

Snezana Lawrence & Mark McCartney

March 2015

Mark McCartney

It is unfortunate that in popular thought the prevailing description of the interaction between science and religion is one of warfare. God, in some circles it seems, is the enemy of progress, the person we lazily appeal to in order to fill the gaps in our current scientific knowledge, an outdated idea, a delusion, an intellectual non-subject. At best, religious belief is seen as a matter of private devotion which has nothing to do with public life. At worst, some quarters seem to want to take what may be called an Orwellian Animal Farm approach to the matter, replacing Snowball the pigs four legs good, two legs bad, with a version of scientism which states science good, religion bad.

And yet, dig down a little below the surface of popular assessment to scholarship on the history and philosophy of science, and a very different picture begins to appear. In academic circles the nineteenth-century conflict model to describe the interaction between science and religion has been rejected and replaced with what Andrew Gregory in

However, move from science to mathematics and the suggestion that there is an overlap with theism is likely to lead to puzzled looks. Linking algebra with the Almighty seems as sensible as trying to find common ground between botany and basketball. The famous story of Leonhard Euler (170783) confronting Denis Diderot (171384) at the court of Catherine the Great springs to mind: Diderot arrived at the Russian court in the 1770s and, it is said, spoke freely of his atheism. While Catherine was amused, her advisors suggested Diderot should have his atheistic wings clipped. Hence Euler, then at the St Petersburg Academy, was brought before the court and publically confronted Diderot with the statement Sir, ; hence God exists Respond! Diderot, unable to answer, and humiliated by the laughter from all sides, left the court and immediately returned to France.

The tale is, of course, apocryphal. It is amusing to imagine that the brilliant mathematician Euler would say such a thing, even more amusing that Diderot, editor of the Encyclopdie and well versed in mathematics, should have been taken in by it, and positively ridiculous that any such argument could make an impression on anyone. We may seek for links between God and the scientific description of the created order, but surely any connections we might wish to make between God and our equations will be as weak as Eulers fictitious remark?

However, it is precisely with the phrases scientific description and our equations that potential links between mathematics and theism are to be found.