(January 3, 2013 at 3:10 am)apophenia Wrote:(January 2, 2013 at 7:09 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: I like the cut of you jib madam...this guy though has given the mathematics world some problems as he gets surprisingly good results but his explanation for his success...wel let the man talk..
Wikipedia Wrote:Ramanujan was shown how to solve cubic equations in 1902 and he went on to find his own method to solve the quartic. The following year, not knowing that the quintic could not be solved by radicals, he tried (and of course failed) to solve the quintic. In 1903 when he was 16, Ramanujan obtained from a friend a library-loaned copy of a book by G. S. Carr. The book was titled A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics and was a collection of 5000 theorems. Ramanujan reportedly studied the contents of the book in detail. The book is generally acknowledged as a key element in awakening the genius of Ramanujan.
(Moreover, mathematical truth may be an empirical part of our mental reality, making it possible to discover mathematical truth a priori without any non-natural and exceptional process, similar perhaps to a synesthesia in which the Platonic realm of pure math is introspectively accessible. [I've written on the subject here at AF.])
Tbh I believe most of the thinking and reasoning actually takes place in the subconscious but in a way the conscious hasn't direct access to ; then the results of the deliberations are transferred back to the conscious so in this mans case it uses dreams on occasion. But of course how the subconscious works and even if it works independantly ( as opposed to the idea of access to a greater supraconsciousness ) is an interesting area.
