The Role of Mathematics in The Destruction of Communities, and What We Can Do To Reverse This Process, Including Using Mathematics
Munir Jamil Fasheh · SensePublishers eBooks · 2012
Since the days of Francis Bacon, the father of European science, who articulated the purpose of science as having “the power to conquer and to subdue [nature]”, people (especially the educated) have lived in disharmony with nature. Mathematics – the “queen of sciences” – played a main role in “subduing and conquering” nature. In recent times, conquering and subduing physical nature was extended to human nature and human communities. For 12 years, education seduces students to live in a makebelieve world and become active participants in the harm done to themselves, their communities, and to physical nature – believing all the time the claim that all is done for their own good!1 As Wendell Berry (1990) says, harm that was done to the world prior to modern times was done out of ignorance or weakness; today, the “rape and plunder” of the world is done with full awareness and conscious intentions. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.