Author: Hafiz Noor Shams

Earlier last week, I came upon a book and if I’m not mistaken, it was Eric Temple Bell’s Men of Mathematics. In it written a story concerning an exchange between Euler and Diderot. Euler was of course that great Swiss mathematician that is still torturing students of science all over the world hundreds of years after his death. Diderot on the other hand was a French philosopher. The conversation between the two itself was about the existence of god.

As the story goes, Diderot — an atheist — was invited to Russia by Catherine the Great. Unfortunately for the Christian monarch, while in St. Petersburg of Russia, Diderot debated with many people and encouraged others to embrace atheism. Catherine the Great was annoyed with Diderot’s effort and so she summoned Euler — a Calvinist — to deal with the atheist. Euler obliged and in the royal Russian court, he came up to Diderot and said “Sir, (a+b^n)/n = x; hence God exists, answer please!”

It’s alleged that Diderot was algebraic illiterate and thus, Diderot was unable to come up with a counterpoint. Petrified and embarrassed, the Frenchman left Russia immediately and Catherine was amused. If Diderot were able to read algebraic notation, he would have spotted the problem with Euler’s argument and pushed Euler into a corner instead. On whether the story is fact or fiction, that’s another issue.

The author of the book — if I’ve gotten the author and the work right — intends to illustrate the importance of mathematics. His work argues that mathematical knowledge is too important to be left in the hand of the few. Mathematical knowledge needs to be disseminated among the public for if mathematics were only known to a certain class, that class would manipulate the ignorant others.

To prove his point, he points out that the priests of the past were the experts of the skies and stars, of seasons — experts of mathematics. Before the season changed, they predicted it and then the season changed. Before eclipses occurred, they predicted it. And there in the sky, eclipses. The class was the learned one. They understood what was going on through their mathematics and they exhibited their knowledge to those that comprehended nothing. More importantly, the priests’ words affected the lives of the commoners, the public — the words of the priests had weight. As the priests developed a reputation as reliable soothsayers, the commoners came to trust the priests. The ignorant commoners became dependent of the priestly class. When the trust became unbreakable, these priests started to say things of no truth to the commoners but brought the priests’ benefits. Lies became truth and the public was unable to discern the truth from lies because they lacked the knowledge to differentiate the two.

This is a disturbing hypothesis which has been proven by history countless of times. Alas, the author was expounding on the importance of mathematics while he could have stressed on the bigger picture — knowledge on general. Whenever the masses are ignorant, the educated few will be able to manipulate the masses. This manipulation might lead to populism.

Populism by itself is not necessarily bad or good; it’s neutral. What makes populism normative is the cause of populism. The good kind of populism is the one mobilized through sound reasoning. Whenever populism is mobilized through emotion, then there’s a high probability that it’s a bad kind of populism — someone is manipulating the masses. The masses could only be manipulated if there’s a lack of education and information and a monopoly of knowledge by some fraction. In vacuum of education or information, misinformation or disinformation has powerful adverse effect on uninformed masses. Misinformed masses will then profess loyalty to the manipulative few and ignore any voice of reason. For that, emotional populism is dangerous and like what I’ve written earlier, it can hard to counter with logical thinking.

In Malay, there’s an idiom: melentur buluh biarlah dari rebungnya; tackle the issue at its root cause. One of the most effective ways to counter emotional populism is to make the masses insusceptible to manipulation and propaganda (remember Chua Soi Lek and sugar? Without education, some would fall for it). In order to so, the masses must be imbued with the ability to think for themselves. Education is the key to counter emotional populism.

If emotional populism could be eliminated and give way rational populism, then one of weaknesses of democracy could be eliminated (tag).

Unfortunately, the expansion of human knowledge is both an achievement and a tragedy. The sum of human knowledge is so vast that it is impossible to master all areas of knowledge. Some will always know more than the others.