Mordechai Levy-Eichel, Hannah Fry and the Growing Importance of Mathematics

In his article Mathematics as Thought historian and political scientist Mordechai Levy-Eichel asks us to reimagine mathematics as an integral part of intellectual history. Far from being an abstruse discipline, manned and operated by hermit-like scientists, mathematics and mathematicians have played a vital role in shaping the history of the world. The most popular example is the story of Alan Turing and his team of mathematicians and cryptographers in Bletchley Park who worked around the clock to decrypt the encoded messages from German Enigma and Lorenz machines. During the article, Levy-Eichel draws our attention to the undue importance accorded to political theories of philosophers, who were never rulers or administrators themselves. While he doesn't dismiss political theories as unimportant or inconsequential, Levy-Eichel argues that mathematics has had a more defining influence in shaping the politics and statecraft of modern administration. The historical cum theoretical accounts of early modern Europe by scholars such as Michel Foucault who pioneered the study of the emergence of new technologies of administration (biopolitics) failed to account for the role of mathematics. Levy-Eichel's criticism persuades us to reimagine the contours of intellectual and political history and re-evaluate the place of mathematics and the role it has played in shaping the world around us. Also, political theories can't be taken as descriptive theories of politics but critical and prescriptive theorization of politics, often done by non-politicians.

In a recent news piece by The Guardian, mathematician Hannah Fry has raised the problem of the 'amoral' in the fields of mathematics and computer science. She says that mathematicians and computer scientists don't consider the ethical dimensions of their works and aren't bothered by the real-life implications of the methods and technology they develop. To counter this divide between science and ethics, Hannah Fry advocates for a Hippocratic Oath for these young scientists that will encourage them to ponder over the ethical ramifications of their work, and its relation with the larger society around them.

Both the articles I have discussed highlight the growing importance of mathematics in shaping the future of human societies, as humanity starts to harness the power of the abstract more and more for concrete purposes.