The Loom of God

Title: The Loom of God – Tapestries of Mathematics and Mysticism

Author: Clifford A. Pickover

Publisher: Sterling Publishing, New York 2009 (First published: 1997)

ISBN: 978-1-4027-6400-4

Pages: 256

This is the hundredth book to be reviewed in this blog. The number had added significance, as when I started the blog on Rediff, I’d no idea that I’d keep it up for so long. The blog was transferred to blogger in March 2009 and here we are!

Clifford A Pickover is a prolific author and futurist, with a long list of 40 books translated to various languages to his credit. He is a PhD holder from Yale University in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. He holds over 40 patents for inventions dealing with computing technologies and inventions. However, this book reminds me of the adage, Jack of all trades, master of none. A lot of concepts are squeezed in various chapters, with little meaning or relevance. Numbers find a conspicuous place in religious thought and mysticism so much that some sects had actually worshipped them! Pickover’s effort in this work is to compile a few of such instances and present before us with a fanatastic story also put in to weave the concepts in a coherent fabric. Fabulous concepts such as time travel, the end of human civilization and super-intelligent alien beings are part of the story.

Mathematics is the loom upon which God weaves the fabric of the universe, asserts the author. The idea is represented in Chinese calligraphy and reproduced as dividers of important ideas throughout the book. The concept of numbers which formed so integral a part of the cult originated from Pythagoras finds expression in modern religions too. The author says the number 10, 12, 40, 7 and such are special for religions. As an example, he says 12 is the number of Jesus’ disciples, 40 is the number of days Jesus stayed in the wilderness and on and on. The argument is hardly convincing as it can be argued that beyond mere coincidence there is nothing much which can be proved. The relationship between mathematics and religion are summarized as, “In many ways, the mathematical quest to understand infinity parallels mystical attempts to understand God. Both religion and mathematics attept to express relationships between humans, the universe, and infinity. Both have arcane symbols and rituals, and impenetrable language. Both exercise the deep recesses of our minds and stimulate our imagination” (p.20). There are also differences between the two, as “Many of religion’s main propositions are impossible to prove, and religion often relies on faith unaffected by reason. In addition, while various religions differ in their beliefs, there is remarkable agreement among mathematicians” (p.21). The relationship between the two is somewhat strained in the present-day world, as the corpus of knowledge has advanced in unimaginably complex ways. In the early 1900s, an erudite person could’ve acquired all extant knowledge, but today, mastering even 5% of the corpus is a daunting task.

The book gives a detailed picture of the life story of Pythagoras who dominated Greek mathematics and philosophy for several centuries. Being born with a gold-coloured patch of skin on his thighs, he claimed descent from the god Apollo and is said that he openly demonstrated his ‘asset’ during one of the Olympic games to astound the audience. The Pythagorean society kept up utmost secrecy in all their dealings and only after tough screenings could an inititate acquire the secrets of the order. He was steeped in superstition too, as evidenced by his aversion to meat, beans, some cloths and some ceremonial predilections. He was made famous in the modern world by the eponymous theorem which relates to the three sides of a right-angled triangle. The lengths of the three sides are known as Pythagorean triplet. There is a formula given, to easily calculate the sides - One leg of a triangle: X = m² – n²; Second leg: Y = 2mn; Hypotenuse: Z = m² + n². Select any integers for m and n and the triplet can be formed quickly.

Estimates of the world population and the date at which the population becomes infinite (by calculation) presents an interesting chapter. The equation which approximately gives the world population for any year less than 1960 down to the beginning of common era is given by

N = 1.79 x 10¹¹ / (2026.87 – t)^0.99

This equation yields surprisingly accurate results for the estimated world populations at various years. N is the population and t is the year in common era. Substitute the values and it is seen that at t = 2026.87 (Nov 13, 2026) the denominator reaches zero, giving infinity as the population. Obviously, the equation should not be stretched that far! Doomsday probably won’t occur on that day. Several doomsday cults led by people like Luc Jouret and David Koresh are given. For comprehensiveness, population formulas like von Foerster formula and Pearl-Reed formula are explained. Sane organizations as the ‘Club of Rome’, which is a gathering of international scientists and businessmen headed by Aurelio Peccei predict the peak of population to occur in 2020 with gradual decline thereafter.

There is another engaging chapter on Ramon Lull (1234 - 1315) who sought to prove all the major tenets of Christianity using number symbolisms. He used concentric wheels with different words written at various points to generate ideas for sermons. The logic can be extended using software to replace Lull’s wheels and examples of such computer-generated poetry are presented. Even patentable ideas can be generated in such a way. The word-combination indicated by the software would nevertheless be meaningless, and it is for the user to think of a way by which such a combination could be materialized and patented.

All religions are associated with mysticism and number symbolisms, the latest being the Urantia religion. It postulates that we live in the 5342482337666^th universe and 611,121 is Christ’s number among creator’s sons. How they came up with this number is anybody’s guess. Being a 20^th century religion, it accepts evolution and the long age of earth. The Urantia book, which is the bible of the movement was published in 1955 with 2097 pages of such mysterious facts.

The author presents the book as the story of a master (identified with the book’s reader) from the future (2080 CE, to be exact). He is transported via time travel to ancient Greece with an assistant named Mr Plex. There they finds Theano, the disgruntled wife of Pythagoras. She joins the duo and the team visits Stonehenge, prehistoric Spanish caves and Greece in AD 2126 when the human civilization ends with the impact of the asteroid Swift Tuttle. Each chapter provides the master to explain some new concepts in the form of questions and answers from his two companions. He falls in love with Theano and they end up together by going back in time to ancient Greece just before the world ended. The narration is too cavalier and irreverent to come from such a prominent author! The trio accidentally smashes the idols of Greek gods in their hideout and litters the place with food packets carried from their future ages. Falling in love and eloping with Pythagoras’ wife is surely a hard pill to swallow for the average reader. To add insult to injury, Pythagoras himself is frightened off by the master’s assistant when he attempted to get near them! Bad taste, surely.

It seems that Pickover is not too fond of Pythagoras. He says that the famous theorem was anticipated in India, as “Evidence suggests that the theorem was developed by the Hindu mathematician Baudhayana centuries earlier, around 800 BCE, in his book Baudhayana Sulba Sutra” (p.28). There is a humorous taunt on the Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi whose amorous affairs are notorious. When the apocalyptic events are taking place across the world, we see, “In the grey waters of the Mediterranean, an Italian head of state wields a long knife and chases a nude woman through swamps the colour of tabasco” (p.210). There are several BASIC and C programs listed to construct the features of mathematical curiosities expressed in the earlier chapters, like fractals, numerical gargoyles, urantia numbers, find perfect numbers, as such. A good glossary on religio-mystic concepts is included at the end, which is very helpful for the reader inclined to such concepts.

The disadvantages are many. Chapters are not closely knit together. There are holes in the fabric, so to say! Each chapter can appear alone, without losing context or interest. An appropriate comparison is to the Arabian Nights in which one master story binds sub-stories which itself contain other stories. But in our case, the grouping is bumpy and unappealing. Even though the book professes to unravel the mathematical fabric behind mystic concepts, in some chapters there are no underlying mathematics seen, such as Apocalypse, end of the world by meteoric impact and philosophy of Ramon Lull. The book is riddled with quotes, many of which are only scantily relevant to the major theme. Some quotes, particularly from Shakespeare are repeated. Economy of words is not a strong point for Pickover as many chapters are unnecessarily prolonged without any significance. Some themes, like gargoyles and how to make numerical gargoyles are plain boring with the simulated figures not appealing to aesthetics. Complicated equations are tucked in to explain spirals in hyperspaces. The author has done extensive research on the mysticisms of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, in that order, but there is practically no mention about Asian religions which boast of 40% of the world population. The book is full of spiritual underpinnings, with the existence of God taken for granted. The defeatism is particularly repulsive as the author avers, “A dog cannot understand Fourier transforms or gravitational wave theory. Human forebrains are a few ounces bigger than a dog’s, and we can ask many more questions than a dog. Linguist Noam Chomsky once noted that a rat can learn to turn left at every second fork in a maze, but not at every fork corresponding to a prime number. The human mind, limited by the same kinds of biological constraints as the rat, may reach the edge of its ability to comprehend. We are flesh and blood, not gods. Are there facets of the universe we can never know? Are there questions we can’t ask? Our brains, which evolved to help us find food on the African plains, are not constructed to penetrate all the enigmas in the infinite mathematical cloak of our universe” (p.205).

A long post-script on the mathematician Kurt Goedel’s mathematical proof of the existence of God is utterly boring and tests the patience of the reader. The proof is inconsistent and not to be taken seriously. Comments and remarks the author has received from the internet and his friends are compiled in a long list in this chapter, which is also one of the longest in the book. Finally, a list of 22 mathematicians who were believers are given. What might be the true intention behind compiling such a list? That, if these great thinkers including Newton, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz and others believe in God, why can’t you? Unfortunately, the author has compiled this list by accumulating suggestions from the internet and laughably obvious errors have crept in. Pierre Simon Laplace (1749 – 1827) is included in the list as a religiously minded mathematician. This goes contrary to the established wisdom as there is a famous story of the encounter between Laplace and Napoleon Bonaparte. “When Laplace first explained his nebular theories to Napoleon, the emperor posed to him a single question. "Where is there room in all this for God?" To which Laplace famously replied, "I have no need for that hypothesis”. Can such a man be termed religious?

The book is not recommended.

Rating: 2 Star