Maths vs. creativity
One thing that has really interested me in this research is this popular belief that mathematics is somehow the opposite of ‘creativity.’
One of our participants who had not chosen to continue with maths beyond compulsory school, Wilbert, asserted that he had chosen English and photography and media studies because he is ‘more of a creative person’. Similarly Sky, one of the humanities undergraduates asserted the ‘different sides of the brain’ argument, claiming that people who study humanities are more in tune with their emotions than those who use the ‘mathematical technical’ side of their brain. For this ‘non mathematician’, humanities subjects are seen as ‘creative’ while maths is reduced to the technical. This is perhaps surprising coming from a sociology student, a discipline which for many years attempted to assert that it was scientific.
This maths/ art binary was also something that became apparent through analysing the participants’ responses to a series of pictures of artefacts that they were asked to rank according to their maths-ness. Deliberately placed in the sequence are photos of a Romanescu cabbage (which consists of very intricate spirals) and of the Alhambra mosque (with its very elaborate Arabic art adornment). Some asserted that of course these have nothing to do with maths (the cabbage is nature and thus not maths, and the decoration of the mosque is art and therefore the opposite of maths). Those who were studying maths were more likely to see the maths in nature and in art and were often the ones who saw and enjoyed maths for it is creativity.
The contemporary play A disappearing number which the team went to see at the Barbican recently explored this often peddled binary. The play claimed to be ‘about mathematics and beauty’; about ‘imagination’ and about ‘love’ (see the theatre company’s website at http://www.complicite.org/productions/detail.html?id=43). Beauty, imagination and love are not commonly associated with mathematics.
The artistic director, Simon McBurney articulated his struggle with this binary, in an article in the Times online. As the son of a
Cambridge professor, he admits to having struggled, as ‘an arty child’, with ‘mathematics’s authoritarian creed of right and wrong’. He read Hardy’s memoir, A Mathematician’s Apology and claimed “I read it and became very excited, because it wasn’t just about mathematics, but about the nature of the imagination,” he says. “As I began to read more, I discovered that great mathematicians worked through an extraordinary sense of instinct and intuition and, above all, imagination – that mathematics was created, throughout history, by leaps of the imagination.” (see http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article2360554.ece) Thus through Hardy’s memoirs McBurney was encouraged to see mathematics as creative and imaginative. In an article in the Financial Times McBurney talks more about the concept of beauty in maths: ‘what is key, he says, is that many great mathematicians “are principally interested in patterns, in the same way that a poet or musician is.” But a poem or piece of music can move as well as please us. Can mathematics stimulate feeling, as well as intellectual satisfaction? McBurney argues that it can:“Hardy says that all of us get a ‘kick’ out of intellectual activity. That’s why people do crosswords or sudoku or study philosophy. And Hardy’s point is that nothing gives you an intellectual kick on the same scale as mathematics. Essentially what he is talking about is a buzz – and what is a buzz? A buzz is an emotional response.”’ (see http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89f9cb5c-3be0-11dc-8002-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1)
So not only is maths creative, but it is emotional. McBurney goes on to explore the relationship between music, as a creative art form and mathematics, he claims “in medieval times, people thought of music as arithmetic you could hear.” Similarly an article about the play in the New Statesman likens the famous mathematician of the play, Ramanujan, to an artist or composer such as Mozart. (see http://www.newstatesman.com/200708230027). This association between maths and music reminded me of the previous blog I wrote on Dizzee Rascal, where he asserted that his album is called M4THS AND ENGLISH because that is what he does- English is his lyric writing and he sees producing his music as maths. I wonder how many music technology students see their work as mathematics? On the subject of ‘But is it maths?’, this comment about maths by the artistic director McBurney made me think precisely about the Tate-exhibiting-artist Rachel Whiteread, who Heather has written about, whose art represents objects by making sculptures of the spaces around them (see http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=70992&searchid=13186&currow=20&maxrows=21,). McBurney echoes: ’One of the fascinating things about mathematics is that it describes ideas, it describes the invisible. How do you describe the space of somebody not being there? It’s very difficult. But you can have negative numbers.’ Let’s see some more dialogue across the chasm between mathematics and art, and disrupt this notion that maths is the opposite of creativity.
Another art exhibition which explores this relationship between maths and art is Kenneth Martin and Mary Martin Constructed Works which has just left Camden Arts Centre to go to Tate St Ives from Oct 6th-Jan 13th 2008 and then to Bexhill-on-Sea, De La Warr Pavillion from Jan 26-April 20th 2008. Sumi
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