Beauty, Math and Human Interactions
Beauty can be found in unusual places. What is beautiful to one person is not always seen in the same way to another.
Today, I have guest blogger, Zachary Hartke, sharing his views on beauty, math, and human beings. As a graduating senior of Chandler High School, one of his final English projects was to write a 3-5 minute speech on his high school experience. The speech needed to contain five literary elements and three quotes, but otherwise students were free to write what they wanted.
I will let Zach's words speak for themselves....
Beauty.
Derived from the Latin word, bellus, meaning pretty and the Latin word, bonus, meaning good. The literal definition is “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit”. It’s a rather abstract word, isn't it?
My brain has always struggled to process the abstract. As some would say, I am very left-brain oriented. I think in numbers. Patterns. Formulas. If I were to choose between deriving advanced Taylor polynomials to the 9th degree or drawing a landscape with oil pastels, I would choose the nerdy math option. That’s me. That’s who I am. I find pleasure and comfort in math and science. If I were to choose between observing chemical reactions in an isolated lab or being at a party with lots of human interactions, I would choose to be with my chemicals.
I used to be extremely shy and awkward, quite possibly as a result of this thinking. Human interaction was always too… abstract for me. So I shied away from it. I only thought that things that I could reason through and completely understand were beautiful. Humans weren't beautiful to me. I can’t approximate the behavior of a human being with an aforementioned Taylor series.
I found, and still do find, beauty in math and science. To see how the world functions and performs. To see tiny microscopic particles move, collide, react, and create something new. To see a mathematical concept exist in nature like the Fibonacci sequence.
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597
To see that in the arrangement of seeds in a flower or the spiraling shape of a shell… that is amazing! That is beautiful.
I tried to apply these scientific properties to human beings, but it always ended up depressing. For instance, I would think, “Human beings are like gas particles. They move around without any regard for other particles and if they happen to collide, they… go the opposite direction and never interact again.”
In the words of Einstein,"It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning."
My limited view was not sufficient to real world applications, so through the course of multiple events that were brought upon me through high school, my view changed.
I became involved in band. Music is extremely artistic. I witnessed ink dance on paper and unite to form emotions incapable of being expressed through words.
I bonded over laborious lessons and courses with my friends. The ties that we created through that challenge are as strong as hydrogen bonds.
I met a certain person, but that is an entirely separate and amazing story that I will not delve into for the sake of time.
Through these events, the mystery of people seemed to fade. No, people do not follow patterns and cannot be predicted, but that’s okay. Humans are abstract. We do crazy things and think in crazy ways. But the important thing that I have realized is that being abstract and non-linear does not negatively correlate to being beautiful.
Although some would say that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” (a loose translation of Shakespeare), I disagree. Beauty is everywhere. Beauty is found in everything human.
It is a hug as a greeting between classes.
It is acting out children’s books to elementary school students.
It is asking someone how their day has been.
It is the way someone dedicates all of his or her time to reading papers and worksheets of other individuals.
It is the crescent moon of lips forming into a smile.
It is the echoing sound of laughter like church bells.
And you better believe that it is applied mathematics and sciences.
In closing, Ashley Smith once wrote, “Life is full of beauty. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams”.
There is beauty in humanity. And all of you are beautiful to me.
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(C) Sassy Me Photography
Zach will graduate next week from Chandler High School and plans to attend Arizona State University, majoring in Chemical Engineering.
Kudos to Chandler High School for recently being named by the Washington Post as one of America's most academically challenging high schools.