A Parable of Moving Blocks

HS #49 2019.8.8

A Parable of Moving Blocks

 Imagine exploring a basement and finding two identical massive wooden blocks resting on a concrete floor. You try to move them, but neither will budge.  Then, using a hose from a fire hydrant, you begin filling the basement with water. Half submerged, you try again. One block remains stuck in place, but the other seems a bit loosened. More water. No change in the first, but now the second groans as it shifts slightly. More water. The first shows no sign of movement, but the second slides a couple inches. Finally, when the blocks are totally submerged the second can be easily repositioned, while the first, apparently bolted in place, holds fast. 

Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.  Consider two siblings growing up in the same home, being taught the same lessons, accepting the same truths. 

Early on, their life views seem identical and remain steadfast. But then they grow, leave home, meet new people, have new experiences, learn new things. These have no discernable effect on the worldview of the one, while the other sibling’s worldview shifts to a new position. 

Blocks that appeared to be identical turn out to be totally different. The first was fixed in place; the second, seemingly just as immovable, just needed enough buoyancy from new life experiences to change considerably. Why the difference? Personalities? Life experiences? Likely a combination of both.

Is one preferred? Aristotle, true to his golden mean, finds middle ground. He said the mark of an educated mind is the ability to entertain a thought without accepting it.  Perhaps similar to a block that is free to move, but after honest consideration remains in the same position. The key for Aristotle is not the new position, but the true freedom to move.

This analogy came to mind recently while listening to a TED talk about an astronomer who proved that other stars have their own planet systems. Since the planets are too distant to be seen, the scientist inferred their presence by precisely measuring a minute wobble of the star as the alleged planets circled it.  However, after the announcement had gone public and a lecture had been planned, the astronomer realized that he had not taken into account the earth’s varying position around the sun as he took his measurements. When he accounted for the earth’s changing position, he realized that his claim was unjustified. 

So, with regret and embarrassment, the scientist reported his error to the assembly who had come to hear of his discovery. To his surprise, they rose in applause. Truth, the pure, unadulterated search for truth, was so highly valued among his colleagues that they honored his commitment to being led solely by the evidence.  (His technique was later used to successfully show the existence of other stars with planet systems.)

This commitment to honestly seeking the truth by following the evidence is the mark of a good scientist. Commitment to searching for the truth takes courage. It may result in altered beliefs. Nietzsche wrote, “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”  

Jesus of Nazareth might agree. He certainly challenged folks by upending the worldview of his time. He brought new wine requiring wineskins that stretched and flexed.

How should we then live? As G.K. Chesterton remarked, the reason to keep an open mind is to close on truth.  Yes, indeed! But how long and to what extent should one search before closing?  When I was in college I was active in evangelism and would often start conversations, “Let’s talk only if our objective is to seek the truth.” Later, in graduate school, I turned that question on myself, “Am I willing to examine my own world view with a willingness to move?”

 I now challenge others with the question:  Are you a Seeker of Truth or a Child of God? Of course these are not mutually exclusive, but that’s not the point. Which is at your core?  Wittgenstein said one’s core belief is the hinge around which others move. How do you self-identify? Is one preferred? 

 A related question:  Why do churches encourage young people to make lifelong pledges of faith and commitment while still in their teens?  Shouldn’t  a religion centered on the Person of Truth encourage adherents to take their time in discerning it?  What other decisions of such magnitude are made so young? Something to ponder. 

Our Evolving Language

HS #48 2019.7.11

Our Evolving Language

I am scarred for life. I’m speaking of the abuse of my father  - a lover of the English language and devotee of its proper use. Even now, I feel him looking over my shoulder as I write this. I am trying not to split any infinitives. 

The words “darn, heck, golly, and gee” did not occur in the Pennings’ household. “Halfway houses to profanity” they were called. I could see the angst in my father’s face when I read a book to my younger brother containing one of those words. Dad’s desire for language purity conflicted with his desire for accurate reading.  

But those were lessons easily learned. More difficult was the distinction between “lie” and “lay”. For those who don’t know, the following – and only the following – are correct: “I am lying on the bed.” “I am laying my body on the bed.” “Yesterday I lay on the bed.”  No wonder folks go crazy. 

Dad drove the lesson deep. When I said, “I am laying on the floor” he would gently – but unfailingly – correct, “I am lying on the floor.” I once put a couple eggs under me so that when he corrected, I could show him that indeed, I WAS laying on the floor.  

But learn I did, and now I can’t hear anyone use “lay” incorrectly without aching to correct them. But I have formed rules. Never correct a boss or subordinate. Friends are OK if the subject being discussed is less important than that I help them become a better person. OK to correct siblings under all circumstances. 

Unfortunately the sins of the father have perpetuated and expanded. I have developed my own peeves. Chief among them is “compose” versus “comprise.” For the record, it is NEVER correct to say, “is comprised of.“ NPR announcers regularly make this mistake. Feels good to inwardly correct those stuck-up prigs. 

“I am doing good” shows the speaker doesn’t know an adjective from an adverb. 

But the worst offense is “Me and John are eating.“ Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. One doesn’t say “”Me is eating,” so why change the form of the subject when adding another?  I have considered jettisoning candidates for professor positions when I heard that mistake. 

The logic is simple: “I” is the subject or predicate nominative. (This is I.)  “Me” is the direct object. (He hit me.) “Myself“ is used only sparingly when self-referencing. (I hit myself.) 

But I am having second thoughts. Way back in the 50’s, Andy Griffith would regularly tell Aunt Bee, “Me and Opie are going fishing.” Why is incorrect grammar so enduring and increasingly common? 

Perhaps language evolves to improve communication. When listening to BBC, I sometimes miss hearing a murder victim’s name because they report the full identity and personal details before saying "was killed," Once I hear "killed" I perk up, but it's too late.

Similarly, to begin a sentence "John and I are going to the gym" gives identity information at the beginning, but no context for it. In contrast, "Me and John are going to the gym" has several advantages. Beginning with "me" communicates instantly that someone else is included. Else one would say, "I am going to the gym." Secondly, it gives the listener opportunity to pay attention by the time the companion’s name is mentioned. 

There is an area of mathematics called constructivism that studies how natural systems evolve towards optimal states. For example, a mass of people exiting a ballpark will organically form flow lines. Is this perhaps what is happening in language?  Are we unconsciously changing our grammar so it becomes more efficient: maximum understanding with minimum number of words?

Case in point: To say “I am lying” could be confused with telling fibs. 

Another: Using the word “comprise” eliminates need for the word “compose” with no loss of understanding.  

No one says, "That is behavior up with which I shall not put." Instead, it’s more efficient to flaunt the formal rules and end sentences with propositions. 

Even the increasing prevalence of profanity may be an evolution towards efficiency. During the intensely frustrating years of my graduate work in mathematics, I had a Mark Twain quote over my desk, “In desperate times, profanity provides a balm denied even by prayer.”

Profanity is also an effective way to bond friendships. Making oneself vulnerable affirms relationships and is more convenient and less fattening than getting a beer together. 

Heck, dear readers, it’s even useful when writing darn newspaper columns. 

Kids Hope USA

HS #47 2019.6.13

Kids Hope USA

A while back I learned how elephants are trained in rural Thailand. Young elephants are chained to a stake pounded deep into the ground. The youngster will pull for several days until finally giving up. With this experience deep in mind, the adult (weighing up to 10,000 pounds) will remain in place when attached to a small stake it could easily pop out with a single tug. 

Parents who recently brought their precocious preteen to me for some mathematical guidance recounted another interesting natural phenomena. When the University of Arizona designed and built the enclosed, self-contained biosphere in 1990, they planted palm trees inside it. Without environmental strains to hamper the growth, these trees quickly grew straight and tall. Then, unexpectedly, they snapped in two. Apparently in the natural environment, stress from wind causes the wood fiber of palm trees to form strong, knurly, interconnected fibers. Without that strain, the fibers grew in isolated parallel strands that were unable to support the tree. 

These two examples from the natural world share a lesson – one that is also contained in the ancient wisdom of Buddhism. This philosophy of life uses the notion of karma to explain that the quality of one’s life depends on one’s choices together with the advantages or disadvantages from birth. True enough. 

 Experiences from early life are crucially important in determining the caliber of the future life of the adult. 

 I learned that lesson yearly teaching senior seminars at Hope College. Towards the end of the course, students shared life-view papers describing their values and beliefs. These were often deeply personal – reaching back into their childhood.  I often left those classes amazed and dismayed that seemingly similar students had such disparate life stories – some filled with trauma, others with kindness, love and opportunity. I was shaken because I realized that no matter how good life might be in the future, no matter how much love, kindness and opportunity, lives malnourished during childhood will forever bear the marks. 

And that is why I am a mentor with Kids Hope USA, an organization conceived by Virgil Gulker of Holland 25 years ago and now spread throughout the nation.  Forming partnerships between churches and schools, Kids Hope provides academic and relational mentoring to young at-risk children. With more than 1400 church-school partnerships reaching over 25,000 children, the leadership remains in West Michigan with the recent appointment of Karen Pearson of Holland as president.

Over the past twenty years I have mentored six children. One memorable moment was in 2014 when I met with a newly assigned first grader.  At our very first meeting he greeted me with two questions: Am I your only child? Will you be with me next year?  The first time we met!  What a testament to his acute need for a relationship. For the next four years, I’d come every Tuesday to find him with one eye watching the door, and leaping out of his seat when he saw me. 

My present child is not so effusive, but I see the fruits of our relationship as well. Recently the fifth grader pouted as he was prone to do when I didn’t give him the answers for his worksheet. Judging that our relationship had adequately deepened, I told him sternly, “Either stop that behavior, or I’m going home and you’re going back to class – it’s up to you.” His attitude changed instantly. I raised the bar for his behavior, and he rose to it.  Our relationship and his life will be the better for it.  

Having taught for almost forty years, I am convinced that the three crucial personal qualities needed for successful living are:  i) grit (perseverance), ii) imagination (creative thinking), and iii) people skills (ability to relate to, empathize with, and understand people).  Significantly, I can work on and see progress in all of these areas with my Kids Hope children.

Today while loading my groceries from the cart into my car at Meijer, it occurred to me that there are three kinds of people:  i) those who don’t return their cart to the cart corral, ii) those who bring back their own cart, and iii) those who bring back another cart as well. The world desperately needs more of this third type of person – those who are not satisfied with doing just what is required of them, but go the extra mile to leave the world a better place. The world needs them, and, more importantly, a child needs them.  

Number Sense: Insights from Ratios

HS #46 2019.5.9

Number Sense: Insights from Ratios

A few years ago while singing with the College Chorus at a Hope College Vespers, I got wondering how many Dimnent Chapel’s filled with sand are needed to fill St. Peters Basilica. So I counted the blocks to the ceiling, paced off the length and width, and returning home looked up the volume of St. Peters. You might be surprised - the answer is 147.

And sitting in the Hope Church choir loft during a children’s sermon, I wondered how I might illustrate to children the 250 million year age of my colorful petrified rock (which I call “God’s artwork”).  It turns out that’s how long it would take to fill the sanctuary if a person brought a quarter teaspoon of sand with them each Sunday. 

Number sense, in particular understanding the relative ratios of things, helps give an appreciation for the world around us. For example, Lake Michigan would fill the Grand Canyon with a little left over. And bottled water costs about 2000 times as much as tap water – without the prophylactic benefits of fluoride. 

Relative rates are interesting: How long does it take a top athlete to go a mile? Swimming: 10 minutes. Walking and kayaking: 6 minutes. Running, cross-country skiing, and roller blading: 4 minutes. Bicycling and ice-skating: 2 minutes. A bit slower, the rate the continents are drifting apart is about the same rate your fingernails grow. They take about 40,000 years to go a mile. 

Relative distances are also interesting: One late night walking home from the office I noticed the blinking lights of a jetliner, the moon, a comet by the sun, and some stars. Extending my arm, I estimated the jet is 25,000 times farther from my eye than my hand, and the moon is also 25,000 times farther than the plane. In contrast, the sun is only 400 times farther than the moon. But then the next nearest star, Alpha Centari, is 15 million times farther away than the sun, and the farthest thing we can see in the night sky, the Andromeda Galaxy, is almost a million times farther than that. 

Owen Gingerich, Harvard University and Smithsonian astronomer, once told me that if your hand were a star, the next nearest star would be in Washington, DC. But if your hand were a galaxy, the next nearest galaxy would be the distance of your other outstretched hand. 

Music is all about ratios. From one C to the next (an octave) the higher note vibrates exactly twice as fast as the lower: a 2:1 ratio. Since there are twelve notes between them, each of those notes is the same ratio higher than its neighbor.  

So that ratio must be the number that when multiplied by itself 12 times gives 2. That number is about 1.06. Multiplying this number by itself, you can see that the frequency of G (fifth of the chord) is almost exactly in a 3:2 ratio with the root (C). The F (the fourth) is almost exactly in a 4:3 ratio with the root, and E (third of the chord) is almost exactly in a 5:4 ratio with the root. These nice ratios mean that the wave vibrations match up often. (If one visitor comes every 4 days and another comes every 3 days, they will meet every 12 days.) That is why C-E, C-F, and C-E-G sound so nice together. It is entirely serendipitous that twelve steps from C to C give such nice results, and is undoubtedly why we use the twelve-tone system. How cool is that. 

But most enlightening is what ratios reveal about the place of humans in the universe.  Imagine a number line with equally spaced tics. The leftmost tic is the smallest possible (quantum) distance and each subsequent tic represents the number 10 times larger than the previous until the rightmost tic is the distance across the universe. It turns out the size of the human body falls exactly halfway along the line. That is, by ratios, our body size is halfway between the smallest thing and the largest.  

However when the same is done with the shortest (quantum) time and the longest time (the age of the universe), the human lifespan is a full three-quarters of the way towards the longest. That is, in terms of ratios, each person reading this has lived or can expect to live three quarters of the age of the universe.  That’s enough time to make a difference in the world. 

Two Visonaries: The Mission of Higher Education

HS #45 2019.4.11

Two visionaries: The Mission of Higher Education 

 I first arrived in Holland Michigan in April 1987.  I was a fresh Ph.D. recipient in mathematics and Hope College had a position open. It was late in the hiring season, so I was likely the final candidate interviewed by the president that spring – and thus likely the last person Gordon Van Wylen interviewed during his presidency. 

I remember the discussion well.  President Van Wylen didn’t tell me he had put a troubled institution on solid footing. He didn’t mention the campus expansion under his leadership, or his previous illustrious careers in the Navy and at the U of M. 

Instead, he proudly showed me a brochure with a statement he had written and honed during the final year of his presidency: The mission of Hope College is to offer, with recognized excellence, academic programs in liberal arts, in the setting of a residential, undergraduate, coeducational college, and in the context of the historic Christian faith. 

Hope College’s mission statement has been modified somewhat since then, but – in my opinion – not improved. A mission statement should be short enough to be easily memorized. It should hang together with an integrity that differentiates from others, while providing a clear path forward. The wisdom that led to that statement was the fruit of a lifetime of thoughtful experience in higher education. Gladly, it wasn’t the end of Gordon’s contribution to the community. Who knew that he’d have yet another successful  “career” developing downtown Holland. 

Although I didn’t know the namesake of Davenport University (which was founded the same year as Hope College), I am just as impressed with him upon seeing the mission statement he provided. It is succinct and powerful, and unique because it is a mission for the students rather than for the institution: “Make a Living. Make a Life. Make a Contribution.” M.E. Davenport didn’t realize it, but he was well ahead of his time – a real visionary. 

Make a Living: Gone are the days (if they ever existed) when an eighteen year old matriculates to a college, majors in an area of interest, and then is all-but-assured of a career with an income that sustains an individual or family.  Prospective students – and their parents – are now intentional about choosing a major and career which makes good on their educational investment. This is good; it’s perhaps too easy for comfortably tenured professors to challenge students to follow their dreams, trusting that a career will follow. Like most else in life, balance is needed. Dreams shouldn’t be ignored, but thoughtful planning is prudent – especially if graduating with a large debt. 

Make a Life: This is the other side of the balance. A college education should provide more than training for a career. President John Adams wrote to Abigail,  “I must study politics and war that my sons may study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order that their children might study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” Yes, if education does not lead to a richer, more thoughtful, insightful, reflective, more pleasurable life, it has failed. 

Even more important, education should make the student hungry for more. Ideally, students should leave college self-engaged in music, reading novels, poetry, history – and yes, even playing thought-provoking, artistically-engaging video games. I am presently in a reading group with former Hope College students and present DU students. That’s good living. 

Make a Contribution: Are you familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? From bottom up: physiological (food and shelter), safety, love, esteem, and finally self-actualization. This loftiest need involves fulfilling one’s potential in the arts and other creative activities – essentially Davenport’s “Make a Life.”  However, later in life Maslow realized that there was yet a higher intrinsic need, “The self only finds its full actualization in giving itself to some goal outside oneself, in altruism and spirituality.” Davenport realized this all along. 

Indeed, M.E. Davenport and Gordon Van Wylen both felt this truth deep in their bones and their respective institutions reflect their values.  Hope College students and faculty contribute by bringing the performance arts to the Holland community. Davenport students and faculty provide free tax help for 6500 families in need, and STEM Days and free summer math and science camps for junior high students. Making these contributions is good for society, but moreover, it leads to healthy, full individuals.  Van Wylen and Davenport knew it, lived it and passed it on – and we are in their debt.