>>10896069Everything that every pop math nerd says is interesting is the shiny glossy exterior. Everything that math education can take for granted it does, and you end up with a low resolution understanding of math for far too long, you are building with legos, not aware that the legos themselves have parts of their own.
The true beauty of math is breaking down the parts you have been taught to take for granted, that you maybe even took for granted before you even learned formal mathematics at all. The sin of math education is teaching concepts as it they simply 'Were.' Nothing in math is any more per-ordained to exist than any human invention or serendipitous structure formed by the universe. Calculus revolutionized math and science, but wasn't rigorous for two hundred years, it was a human recognition of value that kept it alive.
Math has one universal feature: it is the most efficient place you can iteratively ask "Why?", so long as you understand the language; its a shame we taught in school to think more like calculators than mathematical inventors, because when you keep asking "Why?", you and keep finding answers you discover something unexpected:
Every concept in math has a human story behind it. Everything math education takes for granted was at one point someone's flash of brilliance, and the story of how they came up with whichever invention of thinking is as interesting to us as it was thrilling to them. A proof is less interesting if it doesn't show you how it could have been discovered. A method is less interesting if you don't understand how it works.
All I really want to convey is that everyone at some point has been fascinated by math or science, but intimidated to learn more because they thought the deeper you got into math the more like a computer you had to think, when in reality the true depth of so much math comes from a human who formalized their curiosity.
