It’s a tradition for me every mid-February around Abraham
Lincoln’s birthday to write a column featuring Honest Abe and his
link to our South Valley region. This year, let’s discuss the Great
Emancipator’s connection to the proposed Morgan Hill-based
”
Math Castle
”
which, if ever built, will serve as headquarters for the
American Institute of Mathematics (AIM).
It’s a tradition for me every mid-February around Abraham Lincoln’s birthday to write a column featuring Honest Abe and his link to our South Valley region. This year, let’s discuss the Great Emancipator’s connection to the proposed Morgan Hill-based “Math Castle” which, if ever built, will serve as headquarters for the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM).
You’re probably scratching your head. What connection might America’s 16th president possibly have to electronics emporium owner John Fry’s dream of building the world’s most prestigious math institute as a full-scale facsimile of the Alhambra, a Moorish fortress in Granada, Spain?
Here’s some background on the Math Castle’s saga. The Morgan Hill City Council last July put Fry’s quest to build on his golf-course site on hold while disputing geology firms determine if a square-mile landslide area in the hills southeast of Mushroom City could clobber AIM’s edifice. (This isn’t exactly what Lincoln meant when he uttered, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”) Fry’s lawyers and the city’s lawyers are now at loggerheads over the merits of contradicting geology reports.
The legal challenges of AIM’s Math Castle dilemma would be of interest to Lincoln who served as a lawyer. But he’d also be interested in AIM itself. Lincoln had a deep curiosity about mathematics. Geometry, in fact, helped shape his legal and political career.
At age 40, Lincoln started reading a copy of Euclid’s “The Elements.” Written in Alexandria, Egypt, 300 years before Jesus was born, this book lays down the fundamental rules of geometry. Historically, “The Elements” ranks only second to the Bible in number of copies sold.
Lincoln kept his copy of Euclid in his saddlebag and read it while traversing by horseback the Illinois law circuit. His law partner Billy Herndon’s biography of Lincoln tells how the gangly, middle-aged lawyer would often stay up late reclining on the floor perusing “The Elements” by kerosene lamplight.
I have a hunch that with Euclid as his geometry coach, Lincoln built up his logical thinking skills. Geometry enabled him to be more effective as a lawyer – and as a leader. The mathematical axioms and postulates laid out by Euclid taught Lincoln to build his own legal arguments with solid reasoning. They enabled Lincoln to take juries and judges down logical lines of legal evidence to arrive at conclusions favorable to his clients.
Geometry also greatly shaped Lincoln’s political intelligence. You can see the influence of Euclidian logic in the structure of his speeches. The Gettysburg Address, for example, contains the phrase “dedicated to the proposition.” Those words form the essence of Euclid’s mathematics.
Speaking of propositions, I’d like to propose that Euclid subtly influenced Lincoln’s view on race relations. Many people in mid-19th century slave-holding societies held the opinion that dark-skinned people with an African heritage were inferior to light-skinned people with a European heritage. In his early years, Lincoln himself to a degree held this prejudice.
When Lincoln started studying “The Elements”, no doubt he was influenced by the very first postulate of Euclid’s 10 axioms. It states: “Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.” Perhaps this most fundamental of all geometric rules led Lincoln’s mind to derive a new conclusion on race relations. If black people are human beings just like white people, he might have reasoned, then both races are equal to one another. The next proposition in the argument would follow: If black people are equal to white people, then they deserve the same rights and freedoms white people enjoy. This line of ethical reasoning must have influenced him in penning The Emancipation Proclamation.
I’d love to see more lawmaking leaders follow Lincoln’s example and pump up their reasoning skills by studying the rules of logic found in Euclidean geometry. Our South Valley region, in fact, has a member in the House of Representatives who achieved academic expertise in mathematics. If President Lincoln were alive today, I bet he would have an interest in meeting South Valley Congressman Jerry McNerney who earned his Ph.D. writing a thesis on differential geometry. The rules of logic that produce the mathematics of geometry no doubt tremendously help shape McNerney’s decision in law-making.
Laws deal with logic – or at least, in principle, they should. And our nation’s best laws are based on the moral theorems of fairness, equality and justice. Lincoln used these fundamental theorems to guide him during the Civil War to make many of the most difficult decisions any American leader has ever had to make.
As for deciding on the looming question of the future construction of AIM’s Math Castle, Lincoln might set before Morgan Hill City Council members this proposition: If you weigh all proofs of scientific evidence using sound and logical reasoning, then you will find a fair and reasonable solution.
