Crédito: Pexels
Reproduction of Marcelo Viana's column in Folha de S. Paulo.
In one of the chapters of the book "Mathematics: Frontiers and Perspectives," published in 2000 by the International Mathematical Union and the American Mathematical Society, the Belgian-French mathematical physicist David Ruelle (b. 1935) receives a visit from the beautiful alien Pallas, who is writing a thesis on Earth's mathematics, for a discussion on how it compares to the mathematics of other planets.
Pallas is emphatic: "Logical truth is absolute and equal everywhere. It is not determined by social circumstances, nor by the particular structure of the mind of the galactic species with mathematical capabilities. But the style of mathematical knowledge depends enormously on the structure of the mind that produces it."
She explains that the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy study mathematics through gigantic computer programs, which deal very efficiently with the most difficult problems. An example was presented by Douglas Adams in his "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": an entire planet runs a program to discover "the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything," after a slightly less powerful computer concluded that the answer to that question is "42."
"Earthlings, on the other hand, study mathematics with their own heads," Pallas points out with astonishment. Therefore, the nature of Earth mathematics depends on the peculiar structure of the human brain and how it is organized. "One day you will evolve—assuming you survive—and Earth's mathematics may be comparable to that of the great galactic civilizations, for example, the slimy super-octopuses of Ix," he states, with ambiguous optimism.
Based on this discussion, Ruelle would delve deeper into the topic a few years later in the book "The Mathematical Brain" (translated into Portuguese in 2011), where he discusses in more detail the relationship between mathematical knowledge, as we know it, and the functioning of our brain. In the absence of reliable information about the slimy super-octopuses of Ix, he resorts to terrestrial computers as a comparative term. It's worth checking out.