The imprisoned mathematician in this story is trying to develop equations describing life:
| (quoted from The Mathematics of Faith)
Life is equal to the sum of behaviors we can perform and the time we have allotted to perform them. Let us call life L, time T, and behavior B. Thus, L=f(B,T), where f(B,T) is the relationship between behavior and time. If L=TB, then T=L/B and one could simply increase T by decreasing B. However, experiments with severed spinal cords and brain lesions have proved this implausible.
Experiments involving the forced activity of several species have also shown L=T/B (and therefore T=LB) to be equally unlikely.
Therefore, f(B,T) must be a more complex relationships. I now suspect that increasing or decreasing some subset of B, designated bx, will extend T. Identifying possible values of bx is the next step I must take if I am to discover how to increase T indefinitely, and achieve immortality.
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To pass the time, the mathematician begins watching movies on a hand-cranked projector with a gas lamp. Mysteriously, one of the movie characters -- a pregnant rape victim -- is able to interact with the mathematician. They discuss the implications of all of this for the concept of life, and the mathematician begins to include a variable "P" for "prayer" into the equations.
Perhaps it is pointless for me to remark that this mathematics sounds entirely unrealistic. It doesn't make any sense (in what sense is "behavior" a number which can be in the denominator of a fraction?) and does not even sound like the way actual mathematicians communicate. Personally, I would have preferred it if the math had been a bit more believable. But, in a story that is as fantastical as this, that may not matter at all to most readers.
The Mathematics of Faith was published in the September 2009 issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. |
