Here’s a question that consumed two years of my life. What if we took literally the idea that math is a language?
Not “math is kind of like logical poetry” or “math is, metaphorically, the language of the cosmos.”
I mean literally. What if math is a language in the same sense that Spanish, Arabic, and Dothraki are languages: the means by which a little human community communicates their little human thoughts?
What if math has nouns, verbs, prepositions, stylistic conventions, weird etymologies, and distinctive conversational patterns?
What if these seeming quirks reveal essential features of mathematical culture?
What if the three prior books I’ve written, carefully sidestepping variables and equations to focus on ideas, were missing a crucial part of the story? What if one of the biggest and most vital ideas is the language itself?
What if, all these years, and without even realizing it, I’ve been a foreign language teacher?
My new book, out September 3rd, is Math for English Majors: A Human Take on the Universal Language. It is my shortest, pithiest, purplest book to date, and it wrestles with the biggest, most sprawling questions. What exactly is the math we teach in schools? Why do so many of us struggle to wring meaning from it it?
And not unrelated: how does math even work? How can shuffling symbols teach us new things about reality?
It’s a book for people who have spent a lifetime saying, “I’m not a math person.”
It’s a book for bewildered students—and for their even more bewildered parents.
It’s a book for longtime math lovers keen to hear their own language with fresh ears.
It’s a book for people who admire bad drawings, Jorge Luis Borges references, and anecdotes about an ostensibly expert author screwing up basic arithmetic.
It’s a book, I fervently hope and honestly believe, for you.
You can preorder it anywhere. Minneapolis indie bookstore Magers & Quinn is selling signed copies (the first 250 of which will include a stick figure drawing, too). Preorders are crucial for any book, so I humbly ask that you foist the link on all your friends (and your enemies too, if your enemies buy books).
This slender volume took two years to write, and the point, in short, is this: For too many of us, math is like a pothole in the road. It’s a minor inconvenience, something you swerve to avoid. But what if we didn’t have to steer around math? What new roads could we travel down?
I hope you’ll join me in finding out.
Math for English Majors looks amazing. I confess I have never purchased a book. But I love your email posts. I am a statistician, but was a lifelong math phobic until my first stats class. I will pre-order this one.
Thanks, Christine! When you say “I have never purchased a book” I assume you mean one of mine — but if you’ve never purchased *any* book, then I recommend starting with “Remains of the Day” or “The Left Hand of Darkness”!
Anyway, I love hearing that stats class reeled you in where math classes had failed. I’ve been thinking a lot about the stats/math relationship. The content of this book is all math, but the perspective is obliquely statistical: it begins from the idea “math is what happens when we quantify things.”
I suspect a large number of the people in the world have never purchased a book.
With the lack of “pleasure” reading among the masses, or proper education around the world, I don’t think many have. High literacy rate does not mean high reading-for-fun rate.
I was a frequent reader in my youth, either from a library or as gifts. But I did not purchase a book until I was in my mid/late 20’s, as I didn’t have money until then, nor access to book a store in walking distance. I had no car until I was 26, so I bought a car before I was able to buy a book.
Excited to get this, Ben! (As Thoreau said, “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”) — Beth
Aww, thank you Beth! I’ll have to add that Thoreau quote to my list; it pairs nicely with the line that I think is from Pascal (though sometimes attributed to Franklin or Twain or Jefferson): “I apologize for writing such a long letter, but I did not have time to write a short one.”
Very happy to have preordered this. I spent the weekend at a “Learning Communities” training, where we faculty were expecting to build ideas about how to craft team-taught or parallel classes in different fields. One of our English faculty scoffed every time it was suggested that math and English could be taught together. I may have to order a second copy just for her…
Also, this answers the question I asked about the last book, i.e. “What color will the next book be?” The purple is nice, though I was expecting green. 🙁
Just ordered my copy *before* sharing the link with my friends and enemies so I could be part of the stick figure autograph pile LOL
I am intrigued and wonder how you argue that math is a language. Is there some set of criteria you are using to determine what is and what isn’t a language? A definition of language and of mathematics that would make mathematics an element in the set of languages? Or is it just a “what if we take this perspective?”-game? What am I missing here?
It’s best described as a “what if we take this perspective?” game, I think. I’m sure philosophers have language have tried to posit all-encompassing formal definitions, and applying those definitions to math could make for an interesting book. But I suspect such a book would mostly illuminate the nature of those definitions (and how they handle interesting edge cases), not the purposes and structures of mathematics itself, which was more my focus. Or, put another way, that would be a decidedly early-Wittgenstein sort of linguistic project, whereas I just wanted to follow the wisdom of late-Wittgenstein and dive into a language game of our own!
Alright, I have to get the book then, and give it to my Swedish-teacher friend. Seems great!
I love this idea so much! I actually started as an English major and then switched to math! I love both subjects and have been a writer all my life too! So many people don’t realize benefits to relating math with other subjects! I do and I applaud you Ben for your great humor and insights! I look forward to reading your latest endeavor! Bravo! 🙂 Jeanne Lazzarini
Ben, good afternoon. I just got off the phone with the bookstore in Minneapolis. It took awhile but I believe they finally got my order correct. I am looking forward to receiving both a signed copy and one with a stick figure, “questioning.” I am looking forward to reading this book and then keeping it next to the copies I have of your other 3 books. A side note, I am a retired HS math teacher and love to follow all your posts.
Hi Willard, thanks for the message and for reading the books, and I look forward to drawing your “questioning” figure!
I also just ordered a copy. I have been teaching math for 20 years. At some time in the past, someone (sadly, I don’t know who) suggested that some students struggle with math because they don’t understand the written language. They can read English, but they can’t read “Math.” I think that some of my middle-schoolers might benefit from lessons in how to translate a math equation into English. As someone who speaks and reads math fluently, I’m hoping that this book will help me reframe things for my kids and help them understand math better.
Really looking forward to receiving and reading this one.