April 16, 2017 Sunday
Bedtime Story
Formal Mathematical system and Genetic Coding
As a medical doctor, I have another analogy for the process of
formalization.
It is the human body.
Consider taking a human body and breaking up into different
systems like nervous system, circulatory system and so on bringing into play a
totally mechanistic and functional view of human ape.
It deprives any meaning and allows for a much better study of the
complex system.
Going back to the mathematical formal system, such a system may
seem to have meaning, or the strings generated may be assigned a meaning, yet
the meaning is simply due to the rules of manipulation and not the other way
around.
The other analogy that formal mathematics and the meaningless
strings that are generated from their rules can be related to is the genetic
programming of life and the purpose we assign to different collection of genes
in living organisms.
Living organisms, which includes us, are nothing more than
survival machines for the genes.
Genes blindly use and “exploit” organisms (that include even
plants and viruses) to propagate themselves.
Many students of medicine, in spite of being able to understand
this idea often, find it difficult to swallow.
Some might even find it repulsive and disgusting as it dethrones
the primacy of the human ape and is in conflict with the ego of the mind.
Medical students are often told that there are certain genes for
certain type of cancers, certain specific genes that are anti-cancerous and
control cell regulation.
While all that may be in one sense true, the genes themselves are
not aware of their own functions.
The genes are mere strings of four types of nucleotide subunit,
each one consisting of a five-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and one of the
four bases adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.
Because of double and triple hydrogen bonding between the four
bases, the rules of combination and separation are simple and yet very specific.
From these meaningless strings of these genes and their specific
way of combining, arises life and all the meaning along with it.
Similarly, in formal mathematics, the meaningless strings of
symbols may apparently seem to have meaning, but that is passive and is merely
the outcome of the rules of the system and the initial formulas or the axioms.
Just like genes themselves do not care what name and meaning you
assign to them, similarly these strings and the symbols that comprise them
could not have cared any more about the presumptive meanings assigned to them.
All that is significant are the rules by which they can be
manipulated.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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