Dovina5 Jan 2005

The poem relates math to life using the unstated, but hopefully understood, notion that people hold certain truths to be inalienable, much as other people hold math theorems, granted on less evidence. The “oaf, as you unjustly call him, needed a very simple math example, else he would have doubts. Complex math can be just as convincing, but not to him. He did not prove his “theorem” but took it on abundance of evidence because that’s the way his mind works.
I did not mean that the uncertainty principle implies there is no logic, only that it is the logic of probability. Gamblers and God may have similar propensities toward bending the odds by using slogans and hope and the notion that correct thinking affects the outcome. It gets back to the idea of being created in God’s image. Maybe God works partly by nudging the outcome a tiny amount here and there, causing great change in strictly probabilistic outcome – chaos as it is – so tiny we could never catch Him at it.