Red-blooded 3/4 rose

There was once an article in the Observerby Dr Bronowski in which he said that mathematics ought to be taught as a language. At the time I had fantasies of passages like this:

"It is time (the Government)² up to the situation.

the country , , _

On > 1 issue---, and unless they treat the Opposition as-

in hammering out a bipartisan policy they will not get to √(our troubles). All the omens . 2 trouble in the Middle East..." *

* Crib for art students, beatniks, peasants: (The Government)²: the government squared. > 1:more than one. =: equals.

√(our troubles): the root of our troubles. . 2: point to recurring.

But of course that wasn't the idea at all. Years ago I got off the mathematics train at Quadratic Equations - a neat, airy little station with trellis, ivy, roses, a sunlit platform. There was just a hint of weirdness now and then - stationmaster made clicking noises in his throat, there was an occasional far-off harmonious humming in the sky, strange bells rang; one knew the frontier was not far away,

Where the line crosses into the vast country of Incomprehensibility, the jagged peaks of the Calculus Mountains standing up, a day's journey over its illimitable plains.

The train thundered off into those no doubt exhilarating spaces, but without me. I sniffed the mountainy air a little, then I crossed the line by the footbridge and went back in a fusty suburban train to my home town. Contemptible Ignorance. This train had no engine; it was simply a train of carriages rolling gently down through the warm orchards of Amnesia Hill.

The only language we speak in that town is, well, language (we're not madabout it like those people at Oxford; we know the world is infinite and real, language is about it, it isn't it). But we have got typewriters, and they introduce mathematics into language in their own way.

Even without those figures on the top row, 1 to 9 (all you need) there is something statisticalabout the typewriter as it sits there. It contains instantaneously the entire alphabet, the awful pregnant potentiality of everything. I am certain most readers of this article will have read somewhere or other a reference to the odds against a monkey's sitting at a typewriter and writing Hamlet.

For some reason philosophical writers about chance, design and purpose are led irresistibly to this analogy. Nobody ever suggests the monkey's

writing Hamletwith a pen, as Shakespeare did. With a pen a monkey would get distracted, draw funny faces, found a school of poetry of its own. There's something about having the whole alphabet in front of it, on a machine, that goads the monkey to go on, for millionsof years (but surely the evolution would be quicker?), persevering after heartbreaking setbacks; think of getting the whole of King Learright until it came to the lines over the dead body of Cornelia, which would come out:

Thou'It come no more Never, never, never, never, ever or, on mytypewriter - Necer, neved, lever, nexelm vrevney.

The typewriter knows very well how to mix language and mathematics, the resources between Aand Z and 1 and 9, in its own sly way. Mine likes to put 3/4 instead of the letter p. How brilliantly this introduces a nuance, a frissonof chance and doubt into many words that begin so well with this confident, explosive consonant! How often is one disappointed by a watery ³/₄ ale ale! How often does some much-publicized meeting of statesmen result in the signing of something that the typists of both sides know is just a ³/₄ act! How many ³/₄ apists one knows! How many people praised for their courage are not so much plucky as just ³/₄ lucky.

Most of all, is not the most common form of social occasion to-day the cocktail ³/₄ arty? One always goes expecting a real party, but nine times out of ten turns out to be а ³/₄ arty; all the people there have some sort of connection with the '³/₄' arts such as advertising, films, news ³/₄apers - although there is often a real ³/₄ ainter or two. After a few ³/₄ink gins one of the ³/₄ ainters makes a ^3/4 ass at one of those strange silent girls, with long hair and sullen ³/₄ outing lips, that one always sees at ³/₄ arties (doubtless he thinks she will be ³/₄ liable). There may be

some V. I., ¹/₄ (on my typewriter the capital ^3/4 is a ¹/₄) " as the chief guest - an M. ¹/₄, or a fashionable ³/₄ reacher (nothing so grand as the ¹/₄ rime Minister, of course. Guests like that are only at real parties, given by Top ¹/₄eople); but at a ³/₄ arty it is always difficult to get the interesting guest to himself, to ³I₄ in him down in an argument, because of the ³/₄ rattle going on all round.

Of course this isn't mathematical language in Dr Bronowski's sense. But you've got to admit it's figurative.

* That's mathematics for you. I have an obscure feeling it should be either ⁹/₁₆ or

1¹/₂

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