Marcus du Sautoy Quotes
But actually a code is a language for translating one thing into another. And mathematics is the language of science. My big thesis is that although the world looks messy and chaotic, if you translate it into the world of numbers and shapes, patterns emerge and you start to understand why things are the way they are.
du Sautoy, Marcus. "Marcus Du Sautoy uncovers the mathematical code that underpins the universe." BBC Press Office, BBC, 14 Jul. 2011.
Koestler, a Hungarian Jew, lived and worked in England for most of his life. He was not only a great writer, but was an amateur scientist. He like most good scientists understand that no scientific truth holds up very long. We are always finding larger and more nuanced truths. The scientists everlasting contribution is her way of thinking and organizing and deduction which are applied to old truths to show that they are not quite right and there are always newer truths that can be found.
This quotation was from a mathematician who was in the midst of the expansion of mathematics in the late 19th century to include the then rapid and rich development of Probability. This required mathematicians, scientists and others who would use the new mathematics to think in a very different way. For the existing mathematicians his quote clearly states the dilemma for them. Today, scientists and mathematicians have little trouble with “laws of probability” and realize that Probability is governed and controlled in the same way as other fields of mathematics; they are comfortable with different results occurring under the exact same experimental conditions, and those different results are unpredictable in any particular instance, but exactly predictable in terms of frequency of each possible occurrence. This makes Quantum Mechanics rational. However, few non scientists have had their thinking expanded and are comfortable with this thinking. Law and public policy makers are particularly vexed by not being able to think and work in this paradigm where consequences of something can be described for a population precisely, and yet be impossible to describe for any particular individual. This will improve over time, as politicians and other community leaders become better educated mathematically and scientifically.
Marcus Peter Francis du Sautoy OBE FRS is a British mathematician and author of popular science books. In 1996, he was awarded the Title of Distinction of Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and in 2008, he was appointed to the Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science and a fellowship at New College. He was formerly a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and Wadham College, Oxford. He was previously President of the Mathematical Association, an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Senior Media Fellow, and a Royal Society University Research Fellow.
