The single biggest problem regarding mathematics and the sciences is motivating younger students to study them.

While the United States excels at welcoming people from all over the world to travel to the U.S. and study science and math, the number of aspiring mathematicians at universities is decreasing. About only 2% of all students in America that pursue a bachelor’s degree are in the fields of mathematics or other physical sciences. On top of that, roughly 48% of students studying a STEM field in a bachelor’s program, and 69% of students pursuing an associate’s degree, changed majors or exited college before earning their degree [1]. One possible explanation for this is the reputation that math has for being boring, uninteresting, and complicated. However, there could hardly be a better time to become a mathematician.

I was watching a documentary about deserts with my 2 year old. At first, she found the documentary to be boring because the desert appeared to be bland and void of life. Then, the screen started showing the lively and colorful aspects of a desert including its oases, various cacti, and small creatures. She was shocked that the arid desert could possess so much color, life, and intrigue. It reminded me of my feelings towards mathematics. For some people, mathematics seems like a dry and dull subject that makes little sense. However, it too becomes full of life and color once one looks in the right places and from the correct perspective.

Ten years ago, the Wall Street Journal ranked jobs based upon a number of parameters such as salary, freedom, the possibility of promotion, and ease of employment. It may surprise you to find out that being a mathematician was ranked as the number one job in the world! [2] Career Cast, a company that started as a spin-off for this kind of ranking in 1988, also ranked mathematician as the number one job in 2014 [3].

In job advertisements, the definition of a mathematician is somebody who applies mathematical theories and formulas to teach or solve problems in a business, educational, or industrial setting. In other words, a mathematician is someone who insists on solving problems, which is what mathematics was invented for. However, a crucial point is missing from this description. There are mathematicians who not only teach or apply mathematics but do math, generate math, and change math.

If a mathematician is one of the best jobs in the world, how many mathematicians are there around the world? Thankfully, it is in the hundreds of thousands: almost 250,000, and it is growing every year, particularly in India and China [4]. These countries encourage their children to participate in STEM fields from a young age and place a very high emphasis upon education that can help foster a love for STEM careers at a young age.

Although mathematics is the science in which theorems last for a long time, it is also a field that is being renewed constantly. There are not many other subjects in which knowledge can last thousands of years and always remain both correct and relevant. For instance, the theorems of Euclid, a Greek mathematician who lived in the third century BC, are still accurate today. If we look at the modern applications of computer science and mathematics we see that people are still applying the contributions of Laplace about the central limit theorem, using the contributions of Shannon in sampling, and applying Fourier’s ideas about signal analysis and signal processing. Paradoxically, mathematics is ancient and contemporary at the same time.

In 2014, Emmanuel Candes of Stanford University gave a short speech about how he had collaborated with medical doctors and mathematicians, and used Fourier’s ideas in analysis and data processing, to drastically reduce the time needed to develop a scan [5]. His machine was a significant evolution for the medical field. In experiments, it was shown that to reconstruct images with the best accuracy, they need to have only 2% of the Fourier transform. Candes managed to reduce this time by a factor of eight by knowing only a very small portion of the Fourier transform. Netflix also uses this technology for reconstructing missing information and predicting the preferences of users for movies.

However, the life of a mathematician is not always full of success. The field is full of uncertainty, intense problem solving that can often take weeks or even months, and waiting. Most of a mathematician’s time as a researcher is spent in failure. That is an objective fact. A common motto is, “Every day is a failure. This is our life.” But when we look back on the amount of time that is spent solving these problems, everything pays off. Every year, the number of new theorems added in mathematics runs into the thousands. Failures are not actually failures, but merely bumps along the path of progress.

Another common problem that befalls mathematicians is that they will be expected to perfectly predict what will happen should their discovery work as intended. This is especially true of work done under the auspices of government agencies, since they will often not grant money without a very clear path towards a desired outcome. Things do not always go as planned, and thus it can be challenging to argue that a desired result will occur 100% of the time.

Despite these drawbacks, one of the most exciting aspects of mathematics is the potential to discover something revolutionary and groundbreaking. History has shown that the ideas and discoveries of one individual can make a tremendous difference in the world. By encouraging and enabling more and more students to study math and science, we thus increase the odds that more discoveries, be they groundbreaking or not, will continue to be made in the future.

Alan Turing was a mathematician who had an outsized impact on human history. He was instrumental in cracking the secret codes that were used by the Nazis during the Second World War. Some have argued that World War II would have lasted at least two more years without Turing’s intervention. In particular, the Normandy operation would have been impossible. What was Turing’s motivation? It was not patriotism, honor, or a strong duty to his country. It was simple: his main motivation was solving riddles and difficult problems. He lived for the thrill of solving his next big challenge.

Paul Erdos, a Hungarian, was the most productive mathematician of the 20th century. Erdos had no home, no car, no bank account, and no salary. He lived with just one suitcase and his ideas. He worked on theorems his entire life. When he got some money from some reward, he would always use part of it to put a reward on another theorem.

Leo Szilard was another revolutionary mathematician. He was the first person to understand the concept of chain reactions between atoms. His inspiration came from a public lecture, in which famed physicist Ernest Rutherford said, “It would be moonshine talking if you are willing to extract energy from the atom.” Rutherford acknowledged that energy existed within atoms but thought it was impossible to do anything with it. Szilard felt that Rutherford was wrong and decided to prove it. He worked and thought for days. And one day, while he was crossing a street in London, he was struck with an idea about the principle of chain reaction and exponential growth of atomic energy. This lead to him eventually meeting with Albert Einstein and the subsequent development of the Manhattan Project.

Steps in developing ideas

But how do scientists find those perfect ideas? What are the steps? Henri Poincare gives us some hints about how the ideas were coming to him. Poincare, who was always considered a genius, experienced many discoveries after working very hard on the problem and he had a lot of failures. He said: “Disgusted from my failure, I went to spend a few days near the sea thinking anything else. And one day, while walking on the cliff, the idea came to me. And as before, it was very brief, sudden, with immediate certainty, that arithmetic transforms of indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical to those of non-Euclidean geometry.”

So, under which circumstances does a big idea come? In popular culture, we have those myths like Newton saw an apple falling down and changed the world. But in real life, it’s not the way it happens. For Poincare’s example, the cliff has nothing to do with quadratic forms. Poincare was saying that he worked very hard and then he decided to rest a little bit, and finally, he had the enlightening moment. What is important here is if the brain had not been prepared by hard work, the illuminating idea wouldn’t have struck.

So what is the process of discovery?

Of course, a publication will be the last step for the discovery of an idea. Because publication means that the idea is out and going to be seen and read by the world. But before that, we have many steps or ingredients which make our idea stand up on its feet.

1. Fecundation

The first step is fecundation. In other words, conversations and discussions you have with your colleagues. Your interaction has a potential to bring about a new phase, a new idea out of different projects. It may take months or years to decide what you want to prove.

2. Documentation

Documentation is built upon previous research and insights. We may need to document things from several centuries ago or from recent times. Nowadays, all information is stored in computers and the internet, which makes this step easier than before.

3. Motivation

Motivation is the most important ingredient when we pursue a discovery. Psychologists believe that childhood experiences play a big role. For instance, both Szilard and Turing’s lives were strongly influenced by a book they read before they found their ideas. In the case of Turing, the book Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know was his inspiration. When I was a child, I watched “Donald in Mathmagic Land” and thought it was fascinating. It might have played a big role in my choice to become a mathematician.

4. Ecosystem

A discovery or an idea never arrives on its own. A scientist is never alone and there is a whole ecosystem around them. For instance, at one point in history, Persepolis was the most innovative city in the world. Then it was Paris, and then Budapest. Today, we have the well-known Silicon Valley.

If you are working in a lab, you need to have an atmosphere where people can meet, discuss, and be creative. A good idea comes from teamwork.

5. Constraints

The next ingredient that you need for a good idea is constraints. Without constraints, discovering new ideas is not as likely as when there are. Rigorous findings come about mostly with constraints. One of the most famous problems in mathematics is the Riemann hypothesis, which was tested in thousands of experiments. After those experiments, the proof was only a set of logical rules with constraints. Constraints usually help generate authentic results and artistic quality as in rhyming poems.

6. Intuition

Intuition usually comes together with hard work, yet it is not easy to understand its process.

In addition to these six ingredients, whether one has good fortune or not also plays an important role. It is human condition that things may not come out as we like although we might have done everything necessary.

Henri Poincare says, “Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.” Yet, a big idea might take years of work. Still, even after working so hard, our knowledge is like a tiny island in an ocean of unknown. We know almost nothing, but this is such a precious nothing, because that that knowledge came out of the richness of the thought of many people and their efforts. There are still so many ideas just waiting for us to discover them.

Mathematics, like many scientific fields, is an infinite universe with an infinite amount of problems waiting to be discovered and solved. Their applications within our world are endless, and the possibilities to use these results to create real change in our world are also endless. One tends to ask, is math a stand-alone, abstract concept while its vast horizons of knowledge explains the intricacies of our universe, or does it imply an infinitely bigger wisdom from which this abstract knowledge rises from and that relates to our existence? We must continue to motivate students to study math so that they may fall in love with it and continue to develop humanity.

References

1. United States, Congress, Chen, Xianglei, and Matthew Soldner. “STEM Attrition: College Students’ Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields.” STEM Attrition: College Students’ Paths Into and Out of STEM Fields, National Center for Education Statistics, Nov. 2013. nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014001rev.pdf.
2. Needleman, Sarah E. “Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 7 Jan. 2009, www.wsj.com/articles/SB123119236117055127.
3. “Jobs Rated 2014: Ranking 200 Jobs from Best To Worst.” CareerCast.com, CareerCast.com, 9 Mar. 2017, www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/jobs-rated-2014-ranking-200-jobs-best-worst.
4. “Mathematics Genealogy Project.” Welcome! – The Mathematics Genealogy Project, genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/
5. Emmanuel J. Candes. “Mathematics of sparsity (and a few other things), August 14, 2014, Seoul. ICM2014 VideoSeries PL3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-b4aDGsbJk

Is it why we cannot attain maximum mental performance?

If you are one of those people who are unsatisfied with their foreign language competence after many years of hard work, practice, and exposure, then this article may be for you. Even though research in foreign language learning enumerates several factors for foreign language failure – social, psychological, cognitive and affective – whose roles cannot be overlooked, my own view is somewhat different: I firmly believe that one of the main reasons why so many people cannot attain maximum performance, not only in foreign languages but also in other subjects, is largely because of “mental pollution.” This is why, I think, children are superior to adults at learning foreign languages, for they are devoid of severe mental pollution.

Let me first clarify what I mean by “mental pollution.” Certain images of different sizes, qualities, and shapes displayed on billboards, shop windows, posters, brochures, magazines, ads, TV, movies, videos, websites – these are mental pollution. Depending on their form and characteristic, they may greatly abuse a person’s mental energy and lead to chaotic and disturbing emotions. The more irrelevant, enticing, or lustful images are, the more detrimental they are to our social and academic life. For example, a small logo of a computer game – perhaps the size of a 5 cent coin – such as the dragon from Mortal Kombat, contains at minimum three kilobytes (3072 characters), which is equal to about 400 English words. Despite the premise that we only use 8-10 percent of our mental capacity, the amount of visual data the human brain is permanently exposed to cannot be underestimated when so many people, especially children, watch TV, play computer games, and surf the internet. Obscene pictures, in particular, are a common form of mental pollution nowadays, and they are some of the most deleterious to the human mind; they drastically increase blood pressure and heart rate and thus weaken the memory. As an example, a study by Brad J. Bushman has apparently revealed that watching violent television programs has adverse effects on one’s ability to remember.

Fethullah Gülen, a renowned modern Islamic intellectual, reminds us of the seriousness of the topic, while more people than ever before complain about forgetfulness and memory weakness. According to Gülen, the process of learning now takes longer than in the past, and forgetfulness, like an infection, has become prevalent among all levels of society due to polluted minds teeming with irrelevant information. He also points out that long ago people complained when they were not able to memorize and recite by heart a page after only one reading. In this day and age, people complain about weak memory and confess that they have great difficulty memorizing a short text that they have read more than 20 times. For a keen memory, his message to the present generation is to stay away from useless routines, frivolous conversations, irrelevant knowledge, and sources of obscenity.

Similar to a computer, the untrained human mind whose protection filter is set to a low level is under constant visual attack. Given this, mental pollution acts like a computer virus, a code that replicates by copying itself to another program, document, or e-mail, thereby seriously slowing down memory operations. Also, it can erase data or damage the computer’s hard disk, which is analogous to long-term memory in the human brain. Interestingly enough, lab experiments on rats have revealed that these animals simply choose to starve to death when they are tempted by brain reward-stimulus circuits in quests for neuro-orgasms. These rats rarely attain balanced brain chemistry, while the orgasm they experience results in a hangover that lasts for weeks. The same condition is also true for the human mind: the unnecessary over-discharge of hormones triggered by electrifying visual stimuli can lead to long-lasting forgetfulness, fatigue, and serious concentration problems. In such a case, a person cannot make sense of whatever he is studying until the side effects of mental pollution are over.

Foreign language learning also substantially suffers from the harmful effects of copious amounts of mental pollution. The modern methodology and technology to facilitate foreign language learning can be hampered by overwhelming exposure to mental pollution. Although they did not have the contemporary language learning resources and facilities, many early scholars and polyglots managed to learn numerous foreign languages. For instance, Guiseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, an Italian cardinal and famed linguist, is believed to have spoken 38 languages and 50 dialects fluently. Similarly, Sir John Bowring (100), Emil Krebs (68), Ziad Youssef Fazah (56), Ali Ufki (16), Muhammad Hamidullah (22), Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (13), Jose Rizal (22), and Sir Richard Francis Burton (29) were able to speak and read in many languages and dialects, as shown in parentheses, and their success is considerably astonishing when we compare them to present academics who have problems at mastering only one foreign language despite the available modern resources. I believe that these past scholars and polyglots, besides their talent and enthusiasm, did not suffer from widespread mental pollution as we do today. For example, the polyglot Mezzofanti was a prodigy in languages mostly because he spent his life in a monastery and therefore was not subject to any form of mental pollution that could preoccupy his mind and weaken his memory.

I am greatly convinced that an oft-overlooked but very serious barrier – mental pollution – which is very common among people, is a crucial reason for many people’s failure to learn a foreign language, among other subjects. In any discipline (academic or non-academic) where memory involvement is important, it is necessary to be aware of mental pollution. As long as we are unable to control our contact with mental pollution, learning new material will be very difficult and time-consuming, no matter how hard we try, and forgetfulness will continue to be unavoidable.

If on occasion we are able to block out the horror of September 11, those who travel by air are brought back to the reality of it whenever we go through the intensive and intrusive airport security screening now required at every airport in this country, and for that matter throughout the world.

Immediately following 9/11, questions and uninformed, insufficient answers were too often offered in hate-filled newspaper articles and on radio and television stations. Too often, the conversations were by their very nature laced with Islamophobia. The content too often demonstrated our collective ignorance as a people and nation about Islam, the Holy Qur’an, imams, mosques, and what really was the definition of Jihad?

As a counterweight, and spurred primarily by religious leaders in the three Abrahamic faiths, interfaith dialogues and summits began to appear first in America and then throughout the world. As a result, Islam, which had pretty much been a foreign word in America’s religious vocabulary, was now on the lips of everyone.

But in truth, ignorance about Islam continues to drive our reactive behavior toward one of the three great Abrahamic faiths. It is hard to believe, but in a recent poll conducted by the Pew Foundation, 40 percent of Americans still believe that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, because of his name. There continue to be concerns expressed in this country by American Muslims about their place in American culture and society. Where do they belong, and can they ever really belong, without being under a microscope all the time? My friend Eboo Patel, founder of the Inter Faith Youth Core in Chicago, has said, “I am more afraid now than I was after 9/11.”

And yet, within this capsule of ignorance and fear of the “other,” I believe that as a nation there is another reason why we as Americans have had such a hard time dealing with the horrors of September 11. As a nation, we have never had the opportunity to grieve over the horrible loss of life, the indelible visual experience of all that was attached to that fateful September morning ten years ago.

Ten years ago as a nation we were embraced quite frankly by almost every nation in the global community, offering help, prayers, and whatever support was needed at this time of national crisis. And yet, our immediate response as a nation was to seek retribution and frontier justice. Wanted “dead or alive” was a regrettable pronouncement offered by some. And the taunt to those who were religious terrorists was “bring ’em on.” As the nation gathered in prayer at Washington National cathedral, President Bush unfortunately misspoke and used the word “crusade” in his speech to the nation-a word that was frightening, and historically painful and confrontational to millions in the Muslim world.

Because of the reflexive need to immediately “strike back” at the perpetrators and planners of the 9/11 attacks, we never really had the opportunity to grieve as a nation. When we do not grieve over a great loss, we tend to have overly emotional, often unhelpful knee-jerk responses. Anger and aggression can be the first response to significant loss in one’s family, or in the larger human family. And without time to grieve, think and process, responses can be illogical and result in bad decisions.

For much of the last decade, we have not found the time to grieve over the horrors of September 11, 2001. Yet the hard work of interfaith conversation and interaction emanating from religious scholars, denominational leaders, and theologians of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have led the way to places where people of faith have had wonderful opportunities. Through the discipline of prayer, the blessings of shared compassion, and the core teachings of their religious traditions, they have had a significant impact on moving not only America, but many other nations, from retribution to reconciliation, from theological illiteracy to literacy, from xenophobia to respect, tolerance, and acceptance of the “other.”

9/11 scarred the psyche of America, but also the public image of Islam. And yet the Jesus of Christianity reminds his followers that at the very center of their belief system is the word reconciliation—embraced by unconditional love and the quest for a peace that passes all understanding.

And it is no accident that Islam has as its radius the word salam (peace). The teachings of both Jesus and Muhammad have much in common regarding care for the “other.” Peace and divine love is at the heart of both Christianity and Islam. And it is that quest that now leads us to continue the healing process that must move forward between the brothers and sisters of Abraham. For it is the promise of the one God that true holiness can be found within the unity of our diversity.

It is now time, ten years later, to embrace the moment and make whole that which has been broken by the ignorance, fear, and illiteracy that too often define our understandings of religion. Much of that work has been undertaken in Washington D.C. through the creative efforts of the Rumi Forum, Washington National Cathedral’s Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation, Georgetown University, and the Brookings Institution through the U.S. Islamic World Forum.

Many efforts have begun in other parts of the world to engage in work that promises to positively impact the present opportunity—to seek the path of wholeness and reconciliation rather than division and violence. This is a journey begun by both Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad that now defines a new decade, a decade not solely focused on the 9/11 tragedy, but one that must become part of the global community. It is a journey made sacred by all those who lost their lives in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington and by the efforts of interfaith leaders throughout the world.

It is a new time, a new decade, where life promises to overcome the sting of death, where hate is trumped by the power of God’s love, and where people of faith have the courage to speak out against those who use religion for their own selfish desires for control and power, rather than as a means through which all can experience the reconciling love of God.

As a country, and as people of faith, we cannot make this journey alone. We will need partners and colleagues of other faith traditions that believe that this is the moment when we stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and proclaim that no one has the right to take another person’s life in the name of God.

We agreed with the other organs to explain the splendid art inherent in us to you; we have patiently waited our turn. Our aim is to remind you to look after yourself so you will continue to live a healthy life and consciously perform your duty of servitude to our Lord Who created us. In addition to your perfections, as human beings you also have certain faults, such as being negligent, deceptive, or forgetting easily. Even if you realize that these are your faults, each bears a distinct wisdom in terms of Creation. If from time to time you can succeed in avoiding this negligence and escaping these experiences by using these shortcomings as a springboard or platform from which to depart, you will be able to reflect and contemplate on the attributes of God with greater admiration.

Indeed, we are just inside the gateway of the body that opens to the outer world, the mouth, an area through which the various substances you eat to stay alive pass through the mechanic process we implement before actually entering the body.

When food first enters the mouth, it is passed through a grinding process that carries out a mechanical breakdown before the chemical breakdown in the stomach and intestines. We teeth are aligned along on your lower and upper jawbone. When you were only a two-month old fetus, the Creator Who is aware of the importance of our tasks began to prepare us, and we were planted, just like a seed sown in the earth, in the crevices in your jawbone, and concealed by your gums. But still, we do not appear immediately after birth, because we may hurt your mother when she is nursing you. Initially, it is necessary for you to be fed with that unique nourishment, your mother’s milk. However, we begin to gradually emerge in the form of tiny stumps while you are still being nursed by your mother, when you are around six or seven months old.

We were created to cut, chew, and grind food of various textures and hardness. The number and mechanical functions of my colleagues, who have names such as incisors (cutting teeth), canines, premolars, and molars vary. The incisors, which are at the front, begin to appear when you are still only 6–8 months old, the ones immediately beside them erupt when you are 8–12 months, the premolars appear when you are 12–16 months, the canines at 16–20 months and second premolars when you are between 20–24 months old.

During this period, we are known as the milk teeth. When you are 6–7 years old, the molars emerge and then when you are 7–8 years old the central incisors appear; between 8 and 9 years of age the lateral incisors, between 9 and 11 the first premolars, between 11 and 13 years the second premolars and the canines, and finally between 12 and 14 years of age the second molars erupt; the third molars, known as the wisdom teeth, usually appear any time between the ages of 17 and 40, although sometimes they do not come through at all. The two front incisors, the canine beside them, and the two premolars and three molars, that is, a total of eight teeth, constitute half of the jaw, but all the teeth work as a team of 32. Sometimes you may hear about humans who perform various experiments regarding our strength. My strongest chewing force was recorded as 1900 Newton. In a demonstration of strength, a human was capable of lifting a weight of 620 lb as high as 7 inches from the ground. Although each of us has different functions and appearances, in terms of where we are situated, in general our anatomic structures are the same. The enamel layer covering me is very hard and shiny. My enamel layer is even stronger than bone. My sections, which cut hard substances you put in your mouths like knives without bending, are in fact covered in enamel. Beneath the enamel surface is a solid, bone-like substance known as dentin, which has a slightly different composition than that of the bone found in other parts of the body. The space in the center of this layer (known as pulp chamber) is filled with blood cells and nerves that nourish me. The section of each of us that is buried beneath the jaw bone is called the root, while the part that is visible and which you brush daily is called the crown. Throughout your lives, everything you put in your mouths, whether it is hard, soft, corrosive or acidic, comes into contact with the crown. Some substances can damage us. Even stone or steel would not be able to withstand the conditions that we teeth are exposed to. Although made of metal, a carpenter’s saw becomes blunt, and even a blacksmith’s grinder looses it effect after a while. But if you take good care of us, we will serve you throughout your entire life. Unfortunately, I have noticed that you do not take care of us at all. You eat sweet things, but you do not clean us, you eat meat, but you do not brush us, you relentlessly use us to crack open nuts, and pour anything you find, whether hot or cold, over us. We can withstand this for now because we are still young, but it is impossible to say how long we can carry on like this. If any of us cracks and bacteria begins to eat away at us, eventually causing us to decay, you will start to complain, but it will be too late.

The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, gave utmost importance to us in his daily life. Whenever the opportunity arose, after eating, before prayer, in the morning when he woke up, the Prophet constantly used a miswak, a cleaning twig, and cleansed us with affection. This is why we sparkled like pearls when he opened his mouth or smiled, and those close to him never sensed an offensive odor from his breath. But many people today do have bad breath because they neglect us. Not only does the smell of bad breath make others uncomfortable, but you are also causing harm to yourselves. After the bacteria that hides in the crevices on and between us makes a hole through the enamel and the bone beneath it, this bacteria then begins to spread to your entire body through the blood cells in the pulp chamber, causing damage to other organs of your body. These bacteria can damage vital organs, such as the heart or the kidneys. At first, you do not notice this, because this occurs over a long period. But these bacteria can gradually destroy many of your organs. When you do finally realize what has happened, it could be too late; your cardiac valves may have stopped working properly, or the filtering function of your kidneys may begin to fail.

If you begin to lose us one by one, initially you will notice the change in the taste of your food, then defects in your speech, and eventually you will notice facial deformities and sunken cheeks. You will have to make dentures at great expense, and only in this way will you be able to restore your appearance; but in terms of function, you will never be able to substitute us with those artificial dentures!

You know that one of the main characteristics that distinguish us from animals is speech. Although the focal point of speech is in the brain, speech actually emerges as a sound or words with the collective assistance of many other organs. These are mainly the lungs, the larynx (voice box), the ears and the tongue; but we too play a big role in the correct pronunciation of many letters and words.

In addition, the mechanoreceptors in us and the cell network in our roots display such perfect precision that when we chew, we do not bite your tongue or cheek. Therefore, you can adjust the force of biting pressure for substances of various textures. If these receptors and cell network did not exist, you would use an identical chewing strategy for eating substances as hard as an apple or as soft as pudding. In which case you could not bite an apple or you would attempt to eat pudding with excessive pressure, causing us to grind together with unnecessary force, even breaking us.

So you can see that nothing has been created without a purpose. Are there any unnecessary details in creation? Of course not! This is impossible; as the eternal wisdom and power of He who created us would never permit something which is deficient or of no purpose..!

Dear Peter! I think this should be sufficient in describing ourselves to you. Naturally, the food we breakdown is not in a condition to be swallowed immediately. Therefore, our neighbors, the salivary glands can explain what happens next…

Irfan Yilmaz is a professor of biology in Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir.

Just like the alternation of the day and the night with the succession of the light after darkness in every twenty-four hours, the rising and regression of nations have always occurred in successive turns of prosperity and hard times.

As for the leading figures of these nations, we see them swaying backward and forward with transformations and alterations, once in love with religious devotion and piety, at a different time bewitched by the things of this life, and yet at other unfortunate times captured in the web of materialism with no righteousness, morality, or character.

As a matter of fact, it would be quite wrong to conceive of any state or nation that is on the rise, taking root everywhere, as making consistent progress on a single plan and seeing it all religiously-oriented and heavenly-driven with regard to their rule and influence. Following their creation, everything enters into the process of growth, finds itself on the path of expansion and the ramp of ascension; however, only those upon whom fate smiles grow and flourish, and everything that grows is bound to die sooner or later!

To the extent of our interconnectedness with the cosmos and events, we can observe and witness all this phenomena unfolding before us every day. As we peruse the existence and events around us, if we can direct our thoughts and imagination towards historical occurrences as the consecutive projections of each other or as the overlapping pile-ups on top of each other, then we will testify that the world has turned green and blossomed, has tidied up and gathered strength, has revived and stood back on its feet as many times as it has stumbled and fallen over.

We are astounded by the moribund communities and nations, which, like the leaves caught in an abrupt gale or the ivy whose branches are torn off and yet cling to or twine about any support so as not to topple down, get back to their previous track, make great efforts with avidity, and speed towards their time of greatest power and authority. They gush out suddenly and unexpectedly, looking forward to rebirth, as if in an undeveloped shoot of plants, within the most indistinct and tiniest hollow on the stem, rooted in the past with the strength for growth after their decline; they run to grow by clinging to the points of support like ivy plants and try very hard to have springtime just once more.

Who knows how many times the roots, stem, and the branches of the society have been shaken with tempests! Who knows how many times it turned pale from the ice-cold and became ash gray under the heat of sun! Who knows how many times it has risen again in various spheres and grown rife! If the falls have taken away some part of its life and vigor, the springs have embosomed it so intimately with sparkling colors that everything else is discolored and all deceptive colors fade away one by one.

After seeing everything in an astonishing harmony, composed of teensy weensy constituents mixing up quietly and fascinatingly-seeing all these resuscitating in an unexpected manner and with an unanticipated liveliness, how can one ascribe this captivating vitality that looks like stillness and this unity that gives the impression of disorderliness to the true and eternal death and departure? Besides, even if this is temporarily so, every winter is followed by the spring and every night by the day.

From the point of recurring occurrences in history, it was nothing but such empty words heard at the beginning of the twentieth century: “Religion has been defeated by positivism” (as was formed in the mind of those with deviant thinking), “the spirit is down and out in the face of materialism”; “the atom is the essence of everything”; “the existence of all is dependent on material things”-it was such codswallop in the ears. Since the notion of energy was not fully comprehended, the atom was accepted as an unquestionable whole in those days. Before the turn of the second half of the twentieth century, however, materialism was shaken with the first surprising blow from within the circle of their own. It struggled with and got defeated by the perception of its inherent power (energy). Even if energy was not known in all its complexity at the time, it started to show its teeth, becoming more cognizable through the effects of its work. At the time, physics was aware of only its doings and not of energy itself; science considered energy as the capability of the matter or a physical system to carry out work. The science of physics had no knowledge of the real nature of this capacity, its general features, and its qualities.

The coming of energy into prominence occurred at the same time as the materialist philosophy entered into the sphere of the unknowns, chasms, and hardships. It was at this time that matter was believed to have the capability of turning into energy, journeying in the same realms with the spirits. According to the reality of the time, matter-something regarded as the proof for materialism-actually testified against materialism. If the atom is a power compressed and placed in a micro body and has the capability of not yielding to force and if all existence and incidents are created within this fountain of power and are endowed with their latent energy to full growth, those who discovered this immense power whose magnitude is accepted as not measurable in numbers and who burned down Hiroshima and Nagasaki did indeed not only put materialism to death but also trumpet forth its historic death while they were enunciating its enchanting efficacy only upon that occasion.

Everybody knows the rest of the story; we have witnessed the defeat of the forged system based on materialism-a deceiving system with its formation of the family and the society, its social and economic structure, its understanding of arts and esthetics, and its interpreting power of things and beings.

After all that bloodshed, casualties, and financial loss and all those years of life spent in vain, now we are once again ushering in the profundity of faith and spiritual thinking with the perception transcending matter and all existence. This was experienced before when we felt the universal truth in our pure conscience and had welcomed a glorious period of eight hundred years after being long exposed to such kind of chaos and disturbances a thousand years ago.

It is beyond doubt that the most influential power in the establishment of such a glory surpassing everything else belonged to faith. Thanks to faith that our society moved from the mundane to the spiritual life, from chaos to the order, from emptiness to the ideal, from narrowness of mind to the immenseness far beyond this world and the other world and became aware of the depth and extensiveness of their scope. It rediscovered its true worth and merit, its particular way of life, the refinement and grace it had lost long; it embraced and adopted faith most sincerely and had a life in a manner appropriate to heaven. It had such a pious life turning its deeds into worship, its talk into prayer, its appearance into gracefulness and mercy, and its unity into power. Thanks to faith that it found the way from emotion to soundness and sensibility, from logic to heart, and from reasoning to the insight and inspiration and thus stepped up and elevated itself. It found out the secrets of eternal subsistence all the way through feeling and thought, culture, arts, and esthetic delights.

We have every confidence in the belief that the chaos and dismay of today will be followed by the same heavenly victories and will experience a revival. We believe wholeheartedly that we will acquire once more what we have lost by means of the coming people of the heart who will find remedies for our wretchedness and sufferings, elevate our souls to the profundity of their own, and direct them from there to the real Source of everything. We can even call it our renaissance if this labeling will not be considered a fantasy.

It undoubtedly is necessary to prepare the way for this rebirth. The dynamics and potentials available in all the spheres of the society, including educational institutions, houses of prayer and worship, military quarters, and religious centers and lodges will be utilized for this purpose. All this preparation, however, will be fulfilled not by cumbrous institutions that are retired into themselves and consoled only by distinctive titles and designations, that think of nothing else except for their share of the appropriation but by the integrated institutions founded upon the concord of heart, soul, mind, and discipline as well as by those luminous scholars and intellectuals who believe in justice and have a sound character, mentality, and worldview and who blend all these with a faithful culture that has been acquired over hundreds and hundreds of years. It will be realized both by educational institutions that are represented by the lovers of knowledge and wisdom who are united with the truth in body, spirit, intellect, and zeal and by the people of truth with a sound character who get to work with the consciousness of duty, who act not just simply to save the day, and who seek ways to strive for their cause rather than trying hard for the satisfaction of the desires and pleasures of their own.

Aware of the fact that we are now at such a turn in the recurring events of history, we reexamine our conscience and smile at our fate with confidence in our auspiciousness.

Instead, she fumed: “Marrying a Turk! Bah! Unacceptable! A girl as clever and educated as you! What a shame!”

My tears swelled around my eyes and my hands holding the lokum package began to tremble.

“You are going to be beaten three times a day,” she continued forcefully, like a fortune teller. “Like a donkey!” she finished, culminating in irritation.

Her words, as you may guess, saddened me beyond description. Coming from a well-meaning, educated and gray haired person, her comments were hard to disregard.

She knew nothing of Ali, my fiancé, other than the fact that he was Turkish. Yet, this very little information had sent her into a fit that materialized into unleashed accusations as if she had decoded his DNA fingerprints: “Caution! Prospective Violent Husband!”

I left the box of lokum on her desk with the flickering hope that she would change her mind, take one and wish me happiness. I walked out of her office and wiped away my tears, which were now flowing down my cheeks unconstrained.

Since the first day that I broke the news to my family that a Turk had asked for my hand in marriage-as you may know, sensational news travel with the speed of light-I had to bravely face comments coming from all directions.

“Why marry a Turk? Is there a shortage of Albanian bachelors?” mocked my father.

“How will we communicate with him?” worried Mom. “We don’t speak Turkish. He doesn’t speak Albanian.”

My eldest sister wanted to see his picture before saying anything about the matter. As soon as I showed her one, she cried with relief: “Thank God, he doesn’t have a mustache!”

My second older sister, looking at the same photo commented: “He doesn’t look Turkish. Look at his green eyes and his light skin. Are you sure about his origin?” she teased.

My 80 year old grandmother wasn’t interested much in his good looks. “You have my consent” she said “only on condition that he will not force you to wear a headscarf over your hair.” My sisters very quickly assured her on my behalf that the future groom seemed a modern person and would never do such a “backward” thing.

My uncle complained that since the groom did not drink alcohol he wouldn’t be able to join his toasts at the table.

Obviously, our neighbors, who had witnessed me grow from a wailing baby to a well-mannered college student had something to say about this unusual betrothal. I overheard our next-door neighbor whisper to my mom: “The Turks are conquering us again, but this time …” she paused, nodding in my direction as I passed by, and continued “… from inside.”

My classmates gave me the thumbs up for finding a smart man-apparently his Ph. D. studies in physics in the U.S. proved that beyond a doubt.

“You are lucky!” one of the girls commented. “Life in America is worth anything.” She acted like I would still get a pat on the shoulder, even if I was to marry a drug dealer as long as I landed on the other side of the Atlantic.

My roommate made the most mischievous comment: “Our national hero Skanderbeg” she said, “is turning in his grave upon hearing that one of his compatriots is marrying a descendant of the Turks he fought against for more than two decades.”

She laughed hard when she saw that her words had distressed me. “Don’t worry,” she changed her tone. “Nowadays everybody is marrying anyone; Italian, German, Spaniard, Greek, you name it. The only thing that matters is love, isn’t it?”

I could come to terms with all these opinions, except my professor’s reaction, which was very hard to swallow. Why had she been so negative about the very idea? If my future unhappiness was so obvious, how come my family, the people who cared about me most, had never given me the slightest hint?

Was my professor simply envious? Could it be sheer ignorance? How could that be? She was a highly educated person. I knew she was Orthodox Christian. Could it be that she simply disliked Turks because they are Muslims?

A feeling of shame overtook me as soon as I realized that this line of thinking might lead me to commit her very mistake. It dawned on me that prejudice, as ugly as it is, could be sneaky as well, creeping into your conscience with no warning. Was it possible to be totally free from it?

I felt angry at my weakness. Why hadn’t I been brave enough to sit down and have a conversation with Professor Lydia? If I had talked to her, then at least I would have learned her motives.

“Don’t be silly!” My roommate commented when I shared my concerns with her. “Hers is just a stereotype! The Turks ruled Albania for five centuries and she doesn’t want to forget it! Why do you even bother to think about it?”

Could that be the reason? Or was it just another consoling prejudice? I wondered.

True, history had been taught as the Communists saw fit and the Turks had been given the worst share of the blame, a vivid description which materialized in one ominous, infamous sentence: “Where a Turk has stepped, the grass never grows back.” However, this phrase is defied not only by the country’s green pastures, but also by the school buildings, water fountains, bridges, hospitals, and clock towers built by the Ottomans that are still standing as silent witnesses; nonetheless, this terrifying description has been engraved in the minds of my Professor’s generation. It had never crossed my mind that history would be involved in my marriage.

The absurdity of it put a smile on my face; this didn’t escape my roommate’s curious eye. “See? All this silliness for nothing. You will probably laugh when you think about it ten years from now.”

And, right she was. Ten years later, I smile as I remember in retrospect all the fuss about my marriage. My family forgot all their worries and demands, pleased by Ali’s genuine respect and accented Albanian. He called my parents mami and babi-something my sisters’ husbands never did-and he became their favorite son-in-law. My uncle didn’t mind him toasting with a glass of coke either.

Everyone is happy, I, most of all. In my husband’s eye the measure of a man is the way he treats his wife, as suggested in the prophetic tradition: “The best among you is he who treats his wife the best.”

I have read somewhere that one simple way to know if someone is a good spouse is to look how the household greets that person when he/she comes home. Do they smile when they see him/her? Are they happy that they are back?

In the evening, as I witness our four children jump for joy and chant their happiness “Baba is here, baba is here” the moment they see their father’s car enter the driveway, my heart swells with love. My husband beams with happiness at this daily celebration and I am seized by a desire to travel all the way over the Atlantic, find my professor and have that delayed conversation I had no courage to have earlier. I owe this to the wonderful man I call my husband.

Mirkena Ozer had her major in Turkish language and literature. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

This time, with your permission, I won’t be talking about the last two weeks that I have spent in this alien city, as I usually do. Instead, I feel obliged to reflect on your anger at the fact that your father did not use the opportunity he had during his youth to become a medical doctor. What I’m going to tell you has been said by many great thinkers in the past, but I want to bring their words up-to-date and relate them to my studies here. I hope to give you an alternative understanding of tolerance by using the idea of networks.

As commonly defined, networks are web-like maps of nodes that represent entities and links that connect the nodes and represent their interactions. Networks have become very popular these days, and are used to analyze everything from ecology and biochemistry to social infrastructures.

Try to visualize your father 30 years ago in a large network that consisted of his two brothers and three sisters, his fiance of 2 years standing, maybe a very close friend who had recently died, maybe another friend who already had had a child, along with the fear of leaving his hometown for the first time, and so on. All of us, including your father, are surrounded by such factors all the time. Perhaps your father could have overcome some of them, like his fear of loneliness or impatience, but he certainly could not have overcome all of them, because his family, surrounding events, and many other factors existed on their own and didn’t develop according to your father’s will.

Upon further reflection, however, maybe none of these factors, even the trivial ones, were ever in his grasp and thus were never under his control. Let’s think back even further. When your father was in the womb, he had only one obvious link with the world: his mother. But wait a minute, you might ask, didn’t he have other links, such as his genes, family, and birthplace? Of course, you would agree that your father had no choice in any of these crucial factors. Moreover, I don’t think that it’s hard to accept that, for example, his impatience was probably the result of his cultural make-up, genes, interactions with his family members, and other things. As you know, all of these were independent of your father’s will. Thus, your father, and indeed every person, was born into a predetermined world, one in which most choices had already been made for him. Moreover, these initial determinations had an undeniable impact upon the rest of his life and decisions.

Imagine a circle in the center of a big picture. The circle is you, and the picture represents your life, or else all of the interactions that you make during your life. As mentioned above, even in the very beginning, that circle is not unique. Now imagine a few more circles which represent your family members and hometown, and draw a line from each circle to yourself. This is you in the beginning. Without a doubt, soon some circles will fade away and other circles will appear in a continuously regenerating network. Let this little human being live in this world (morph his network, as we say) for some years and, in the end, you’ll obtain a dreadfully complex picture that is almost impossible to understand.

Nevertheless, let’s consider for a moment the evolution of this self-network. At each decision point, we make a choice that is influenced by our personal self-network, defined as a collection of those choices over which we had no control and those which we made due to our personal network at that time. This recursive definition of self, which is entirely reasonable, makes it impossible for us to judge other people’s behavior, for we can never know if such behavior is the result of free will or of the previous self-network. We find it easy to criticize students who drop out of school, or behave anti-socially, or sleep all day. But maybe they had no other option in the context of their self-network. If this is the case, criticizing them is almost like criticizing a fish because it cannot fly. It is quite possible that no alternative choices were within their reach.

The key observation lies in this: When we see a person do something that we don’t like, we don’t know and can never know how much his or her self-network has influenced that specific act. Therefore, my friend, who are we to judge other people’s acts unless we have this kind of knowledge? Given this, if we want to be true to ourselves, what other alternative do we have but to exercise complete tolerance toward others?

Before going on, however, I should stress that I am talking about tolerance for acts that don’t violate other people’s rights and freedoms. In addition, I’m talking about personal tolerance only, for obviously everyone must follow the law for the sake of society. For example, a thief should be punished according to the law. Therefore, given that there are many underlying reasons for a person’s act, we should hesitate before passing judgment, for it benefits both of us if we are tolerant. As shown above, this is not only a more pragmatic, but also a more rational approach.

The world’s great religions and great minds have said such things many times. For example, we read in the Bible: Judge not, that ye be not judged (Matthew 7:1) and Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whoseoever thou art that judgest… (Romans 2:1). The great Hellenistic philosopher Epictetus says: If a man drinks much wine, do not say that he drinks badly, but that he drinks much. For till you have decided what judgment prompts him, how do you know that he acts badly? 1 Even more, another Biblical verse states: Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God. (I Corinthians 4:5). This verse supports tolerance, for it tells us that we should have comprehensive knowledge of a person before judging their acts. Such knowledge, as we all know, is possessed only by God.

An interesting result of considering individuals as nodes located in the center of a complex network occurs when we try to influence a person’s views, acts, and beliefs. In order to appreciate how difficult (if not impossible) this is, imagine the self-network of the person you want to influence, with all of his or her beliefs, memories, friends, as well as all of the nodes acquired while morphing his or her self-network.

Now imagine the fraction of nodes in that self-network that are directly related to you. I don’t think that you’ll claim to be a big part of that person’s life, unless both of you have been on intimate terms for quite a while. The proportion of the nodes that you represent in his or her self-network can be quite an accurate measure of how much influence you will have. For example, you can alter a lonely or a simple person’s beliefs in a shorter time, since in a short time you can become a large proportion of his or her self-network.

By the way, you might be amazed to hear that the English mathematician Thomas Bayes (1702-61) tried to formulate quantitatively how a person’s beliefs would change upon receiving new information that contradicts his or her previous beliefs. In a Bayesian analysis, a set of experiences (in our case, links) are seen as something that influences opinion and decision. I won’t discuss this further, however, since it’s beyond both my and this letter’s scope.

In my opinion, the reason why we almost always criticize and blame others, and constantly see faults in everybody else is because we refuse to make an honest self-criticism; that is to consider our own responsibilities, not those of other people.

Forgive me for saying this, but you want to achieve a better quality of life now; this is something for which you have to work really hard. Yet, if your father had become a doctor, you probably would already be living this better life, and so you wouldn’t have to push yourself. Hence, we can find a convenient scapegoat in your father, who, for whatever reason, didn’t set you up with such a life!

Another example, one in the future, might be that a person explains his/her beliefs in the hope of influencing someone else. Unable to convince this person, he/she blames that person for not opening their heart and really listening. Easy, isn’t it? However, remember that you can’t really influence a person if you are not a large part of his or her life.

Do you see what’s missing in this picture? Reality and, more than that, a solution. It lacks reality, for we can never hold someone absolutely responsible for anything. And why not? Because we have no way of knowing which actions were based upon free-will and which ones were the result of his or her prior self-network. By blaming others, regardless of whether we are correct in doing so or not, we not only contradict reality, we also ignore our own mistakes, closing the roads to a solution that could come from ourselves, and taking a passive position of stagnancy that, I think, won’t make a better world for ourselves or anybody else.

Before ending, I’d like to apologize if some of my words sound harsh. However, I consider you a true friend who will appreciate my openness. Even if some of my words have upset you, perhaps you’ll be patient with me. For this to be, before blaming me, stop for a moment and try to look at this situation from another perspective. Try to find some truth in my words, and try to be hard on yourself. Below are some extraordinarily beautiful lines from Nietzsche, which I think are appropriate to our discussion. He writes:

Why so hard? the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. After all, are we not close kin?

Why so soft? O my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my brothers?

Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?

And if you do not want to be the destined inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me?

And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut through, how can you one day create with me?

For all creators are hard. And it must seem bliss to you to impress your hand on millennia as on wax, bliss to write on the will of millennia as on bronze harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard.

This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: become hard!2

Yes my friend, become hard, very hard on yourself; and soft, very soft towards others.

Footnotes

1 Epictetus, The Discourses of Epictetus, tr. P. E. Matheson (New York: Heritage Press, [1968]).

2 Friedrich W. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. Walter Kaufmann (USA: Viking Penguin, 1966), 214.