As you will know the proof of the Riemann hypothesis is the most important unsolved problem in mathematics. To solve it would revolutionise applications of mathematical analysis in a myriad if unknowable ways that would transform our lives and those of future generations. Indeed, it is mathematics itself which is the bedrock of civilisation, at first evidenced by architectural achievements such as Egyptian pyramids, and by astronomical observations essential to architecture. Since then, our mathematical understanding has advanced, but never at a constant rate.
Like evolution itself, there have been rapid advances and crippling setbacks along the way. If the Library of Alexandria had never been burned to the ground it is possible to imagine that we would have built upon the achievements of the ancient Greeks to greater and earlier effect, and therefore it could have been in the time of a Cardano or a Newton or a Pascal that we first put a man on the moon. And we can only wonder where we would be. And at the planets we would have terraformed and colonised by the twenty-first century. Which medical advances we would have made. Maybe if there had been no dark ages, no switching off of the light, we would have found a way to never grow old, to never die.
People joke, in our field, about Pythagoras and his religious cult based on perfect geometry and other abstract mathematical forms, but if we are going to have religion at all then a religion of mathematics seems ideal, because if God exists then what is He but a mathematician?
And so today we may be able to say, we have risen a little closer towards our deity. Indeed, potentially we have a chance to turn back the clock and rebuild that ancient library so we can stand on the shoulders of giants that never were.
The Humans, P59-60
Matt Haig
ISBN 978-0-85786-876-3
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