Évariste Galois, the French mathematician renowned for his foundational contributions to group theory and the solvability of polynomial equations by radicals, completed what is now known as Galois theory while imprisoned for his anti-monarchy views in the overcrowded and unsanitary Sainte-Pélagie prison.
Fearing that he would die before he could record his ideas — either from cholera or an unwinnable duel that was waiting for him outside — he attempted to commit suicide. His final notes on Galois theory feature several “I have no time” comments in their margins. Was it the best use of his time, given the circumstances?
In a famous 1965 Playboy interview, Alex Haley asked Martin Luther King what single book, apart from the Bible, he would choose if marooned on a desert island. He responded: “That’s tough. Let me think about it — one book, not the Bible. Well, I think I would have to pick Plato’s Republic.” Should he have chosen “The Ultimate Wilderness Survival Guide” instead?
Theoretical physicist Richard Feynman is often credited — despite the quote being a fusion of two separate statements — with saying, “Science is like love: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” These words hint that neither Galois, nor MLK, nor, perhaps, Feynman himself had the practical use of their ideas in mind when they were ready to sacrifice their scarce resources. But why?
One may conjecture that on that island, King would continue his fundamental explorations into the principles of ethical leadership and the mechanics of societal reforms, with Plato’s foundational work on justice as a guide. However, according to Plato’s Republic, the aforementioned justice — or the second and true sun — doesn’t live in the cave of policy, politics, day-to-day existence and social media, but only reveals itself to the brave ones who dare to escape it. This is it! Both Plato and MLK talk about the eternal and how the yearning to comprehend it makes us bigger than the very life we inhabit.
Roosevelt Montás, a professor of American studies at Columbia University, was “a fatherless teenager who had recently immigrated to the Bronx from the sticks of the Dominican Republic and was still learning to read in English when he found himself on a winter evening faced with a pile of discarded books.” At random, he grabbed two books, and “one of them was a volume of Plato’s dialogues. That fortuitous selection—and his dogged efforts to learn what was between those covers—would fundamentally change him.”
It also continues to change the lives of his students. In his book, “Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation,” Montás writes: “Every year, I witness Socrates bringing students … to serious contemplation of the ultimately existential issues his philosophy demands we grapple with. … My students from low-income households do not take this sort of thinking to be the exclusive privilege of a social elite. In fact, they find in it a vision of dignity and excellence that is not constrained by material limitations.”
By contrast, UMass Boston’s Grand Scholarly Challenges have nothing of the eternal. They read like a State of the Union Address. A policy statement. Maybe political march signs. They implicitly advise our students to get a public policy degree with a minor in either climate science or cell biology. What’s worse is that the Challenges tell our students — by omission — that the quest for the unknown is not for them. But it is.
In the 1997 American psychological drama, “Good Will Hunting,” the eponymous protagonist, a brilliant but troubled young janitor at MIT with a genius-level intellect in mathematics, anonymously solves a complex graph theory problem posted on a blackboard by a professor. He becomes a professional mathematician later. Would have his life turned differently if the blackboard had read: “Describe the ways graph theory serves societies?”
Nine out of ten students registering as physics majors want to work in cosmology. They want to know how it all began. Even if “black holes to societies” were an option, it would do nothing to attract young minds to physics. Our students want something bigger, and intuitively, they know that this “bigger” is a gateway to a fulfilling and meaningful life.