Chapter 418: Chapter 417 Key of Truth
At the end of the second floor, within the room.
This was a very large room, several dozen square ters in size, with every corner clean and tidy. The bedding on the bed had been freshly changed, and a faint fragrance of flowers filled the air, giving off a comfortable feeling.
Richard nodded with satisfaction and sat down at the desk. Pandora, on the other hand, walked straight to the soft bed, eyes fixated as if bewitched, and “thump” sat onto the bed without uttering a word, just sitting there, spacing out continuously.
This behavior of Pandora’s had been going on for several days now.
The reason for this was that, after the initial excitent of leaving White Stone City had passed, Pandora rembered her experiences in White Stone City and felt utterly useless. She wasn’t good at learning anything and couldn’t even fight well. She was indeed a little heartbroken.
After so serious reflection, Pandora made a very formal request to Richard, expressing her desire to learn sothing truly useful from him so that she wouldn’t be helpless in similar situations in the future.
Truly useful!
Pandora emphasized these four words strongly.
Upon studying, Richard found that Pandora wasn’t joking. He genuinely gave it so thought.
What are the truly useful things?
What is it that’s truly useful?
Are combat skills useful? Very. Yet they are not needed for conducting experints. Even if you are a master fighter, it is of no help in doing experints, and that is why Pandora sotis felt defeated.
Then, are experints useful? Yes, they are, but excelling in them doesn’t enhance fighting ability. Having Pandora conduct experints was essentially a waste of her formidable combat skills.
Truthfully, many things that are considered useful are characterized by their one-sidedness and limitations. They can only function in one or a few fields, and once outside that scope, they beco useless.
Even scientific knowledge is so.
A person may be strong in the field of biology, but if you throw them into a chanical factory, they’d be at a loss.
A person may have outstanding contributions in the field of chanical engineering, but if you ask them to switch to cultivating cells, they too would be clueless.
What, then, is truly useful? What can be applied everywhere without any limits after it’s learned?
In other words, what is the essence of science? What is at the core of everything?
There is only one answer to this, and that is—mathematics.
Yes, mathematics.
At the very foundation of the entire world, the entire rational and scientific world, there lies an unshakable cornerstone: mathematics. It is upon this cornerstone of mathematics that physics, chemistry, biology, and so on are built.
The entire world, the truths of the entire world, every law, and formula, are all constructed upon the foundation of mathematics.
For example, Newton discovered his second law: the magnitude of the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting upon it, inversely proportional to the mass of the object, and directly proportional to the reciprocal of the mass.
That is, F=m*a.
F=m*a, such a concise and holy formula. Within the realm of classical chanics, nothing can contradict it.
But why is this formula the way it is? How could Newton so precisely articulate this formula? Did he peel open the entire world and glimpse the real principles of the universe?
Clearly, he did not.
Actually, Newton did not glimpse any universal principles. The formula exists because he first defined F, m, a, and then combined them into this formula.
Similarly, if he’d wanted, he could have made the formula more complicated, like F=d*t*g or W=5h*r*k*￥/2472, for instance.
Then all the basic concepts of classical chanics might need to be redefined to explain the letters in the formula. But no matter what the basic concepts are, within this system, everything is internally consistent and can be used to explain the phenona of motion.
So, it’s not that Newton discovered the principles of the world, rather he proposed a hypothesis that happened to explain the phenona of the world.
The sa is true for other disciplines, which have been constructed top-down, internally consistent within themselves and externally capable of explaining the various manifestations of the world’s operations.
This is how the entire body of technology ca about.
First, there is a hypothesis, then validation, and finally, it becos a theorem.
This is why the renowned philosopher of science, Carl Popper, proposed that the criterion for judging whether a theory (proposition) is scientific is its falsifiability. That is, a theory is considered unscientific if there exists a single phenonon that does not conform to it; however, until such a phenonon is found, it is deed scientific within the corresponding field.
Science has never claid to be everything in the world or to explain everything. It is simply seen as a careful and rigorous thod for exploring the world.
It can even be said that science is just an imagination, a highly ticulous and ticulously linked chain of imagination, and until a flaw in this imagination can be found, it is considered the truth.
The reason scientific imagination can be so ticulous and tightly linked is that it is based on mathematics.
All imagination starts from the most basic mathematics, from the nurical operations beginning with 1 1=2.
Only if you believe 1 1=2 to be correct do you have integers, pri numbers, exponential functions, calculus, functions, relativity, nuclear physics, Quantum Science, and so on.
Just like Newton defined F, m, and a, there ca F=m*a.
No one has glimpsed the principles of the world, but mathematics has assud and simulated the principles of the world.
That is mathematics, and it is the most useful thing.
If a person can master mathematics, it ans they have the most powerful ability—the ability to see through the essence of the world.
Thus, in modern Earth’s most cutting-edge fields—rockets, satellites, nuclear weapons, finance—there is nothing that does not require mathematics.
Mathematics is truly a useful thing, the Key of Truth.
After this contemplation, Richard decided to teach Pandora mathematics.
And so, the bewitched Pandora of now ca to be.
Considering Pandora’s foundation, Richard did not start off by teaching her difficult concepts like Quadratic Equations, Geotry, or Definite Integrals. He set aside all those things and began with sothing of an elentary school level from modern Earth.
What Richard taught was… the Four Operations.
Truth be told, it wasn’t even the entirety of the Four Operations, but just a part of them, the essence of ancient Chinese reckoning that was summarized from experience, the unique mathematical essence invented during the Spring and Autumn Period—an existence unique in the world.
Yes, the Multiplication Table.
One tis one equals one.
One tis two equals two, two tis two equals four.
One tis three equals three, two tis three equals six…
Starting from the first day after leaving White Stone City, Richard taught Pandora the entire Multiplication Table, and since then, she had been digesting it.
One day, two days, three days… Up to today, it had been five days.
These five days, Pandora had been trying hard to morize.
Reviews
All reviews (0)