Authors

C. Ralph Verno

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

6-5-1979

Abstract

It is universally agreed that mathematics is important, that it is indeed very significant in life. This would be admitted even by those who are ignorant of or who dislike mathematics. There would be much less agreement, however, about why mathematics is important or significant. Such disagreement exists even more among mathematicians and mathematics educators. Unhappily many of the Christians who think about such things (and there are not very many who think about them at all) basically share the utilitarian view of many non-Christian thinkers, although endeavoring to place it within a Christian context. They think it is wonderful that God has provided such a beneficial tool as mathematics, or that God has given man the ability to develop mathematics in order to serve science. The importance of mathematics in the Christian outlook, as they see it, is in the fact that God has provided it as a remarkably useful vehicle with which to advance the causes of the natural and social sciences, in addition to its usefulness in everyday life. This paper looks at another role of mathematics not often considered, and that is how mathematics functions as art.

Notes

Originally printed in Torch and Trumpet.

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