I’d been talking with my friend the Imam who, like the Holy Father the week before, expressed concern with the blight of secularism.
The Imam mentioned Richard Dawkins (and his million followers) as the Prince of Secularism. /* caveat : my mind may perhaps have embellished this interchange! */ I responded by classifying Dawkins as a materialist – in the sense that he, as a biologist, is accustomed to handling plants and animals, material objects, which can be scrutinised in scientific laboratories. Our conversation then deviated to the Imam’s exposition of the traits of secularity. I, for once, remained silent. Wondering.
Later I happened to take up with Roger Penrose and with Douglas R Hofstadter, among others, opening the door to the world of ‘the square root of minus one’ : an imaginary number incapable of observation even under the most intense of microscopes.
Yet the square root of minus one actually exists. I came to be aware of its existence when I first moved for the teaching of the C++ computer programming language. I did not then know what was symbolised by the mystical letter ‘i’. I only saw how its properties once entered into the initial planning made the viable outcome possible.
Our lives are not utterly delimited by the materials of laboratory experiment. Consciousness of the imaginary goes with us. Hand in hand.
Pick me a handful of BlackBerries. Yes!
Pluck me a handful of imaginary numbers? Ah!
francis cameron, oxford, 2 october 2010
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