Is This The Mathematical Formula For God?
Expressing the absolute mathematically became the mission of Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan.
The story of mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, can only be told with a halo of myth and amazement, as the lives of artists are often retold. Born in 1887 to a Brahman family, Ramanujan had no access to formal education until his adulthood. By then, Ramanujan had already developed a complex and fascinating body of work which is still being unraveled by scientists in all different disciplines even to this day.
One reason Ramanujan still draws attention, even from those without advanced mathematical knowledge, is that imagination and spirituality were an indivisible part of his reasoning. In work that clamored at the foundations of disciplines the author had never studied, something very nearly miraculous happened. But that risks missing the extremes of Ramanujan’s workmanship; workmanship which resulted in important changes in theoretical mathematics by providing new solutions to old problems.
In his book The Man Who Knew Infinity, Robert Kanigel explained Ramanujan’s particularity in the practice of mathematics as a method of expressing spiritual, philosophical concepts – and even those related to divinity – with absolute devotion. Although he was born into a context where religion is part of the daily lives of millions of Hindus, his interests extended to the religious thinking of many other cultures.
Ramanujan’s intention, possibly realized but interrupted by his early death, was nothing less than to formulate the absolute, and god or the gods, mathematically. This intention was analogous to that of physics concerning any other natural phenomenon.
In a quest similar to Einstein’s famous “unified field theory,” Ramanujan worked to create a “theory of reality,” based closely on the way that Hindu religious thought conceptualizes the function of zero. According to this approach, zero is not equivalent to nothingness or emptiness, but to what Spinoza would call a “power.” Under this notion, with zero as a power, Ramanujan contrasted (or multiplied) the infinite; “all numbers, or any individual act of creation,” whose field precisely encompasses a whole.
By multiplying infinity (∞) by zero (0): ∞ x 0 = “the myriad manifestations of that reality.”
It may seem abstract, and it can seem an oversimplification on multiple fronts, but we can approach the interpretation in a less arid way by thinking that reality is simply what we do with it. This is both in our position of performing “any individual act of creation,” as it is in the fact that we are part of everything created. To say it differently, reality is that which occupies its own place: a complete void, it overflows a nothingness through which life passes.
*Image: Public Domain
Related Articles
When ancient rituals became religion
The emergence of religions irreversibly changed the history of humanity. It’s therefore essential to ask when and how did ancient peoples’ rituals become organized systems of thought, each with their
Seven ancient maps of the Americas
A map is not the territory. —Alfred Korzybski Maps are never merely maps. They’re human projections, metaphors in which we find both the geographical and the imaginary. The cases of ghost islands
An artist crochets a perfect skeleton and internal organs
Shanell Papp is a skilled textile and crochet artist. She spent four long months crocheting a life-size skeleton in wool. She then filled it in with the organs of the human body in an act as patient
A musical tribute to maps
A sequence of sounds, rhythms, melodies and silences: music is a most primitive art, the most essential, and the most powerful of all languages. Its capacity is not limited to the (hardly trivial)
The enchantment of 17th-century optics
The sense of sight is perhaps one the imagination’s most prolific masters. That is why humankind has been fascinated and bewitched by optics and their possibilities for centuries. Like the heart, the
Would you found your own micro-nation? These eccentric examples show how easy it can be
Founding a country is, in some ways, a simple task. It is enough to manifest its existence and the motives for creating a new political entity. At least that is what has been demonstrated by the
Wondrous crossings: the galaxy caves of New Zealand
Often, the most extraordinary phenomena are “jealous of themselves” ––and they happen where the human eye cannot enjoy them. However, they can be discovered, and when we do find them we experience a
Think you have strange reading habits? Wait until you've seen how Mcluhan reads
We often forget or neglect to think about the infinite circumstances that are condensed in the acts that we consider habitual. Using a fork to eat, for example, or walking down the street and being
The sky is calling us, a love letter to the cosmos (video)
We once dreamt of open sails and Open seas We once dreamt of new frontiers and New lands Are we still a brave people? We must not forget that the very stars we see nowadays are the same stars and
The sister you always wanted (but made into a crystal chandelier)
Lucas Maassen always wanted to have a sister. And after 36 years he finally procured one, except, as strange as it may sound, in the shape of a chandelier. Maassen, a Dutch designer, asked the