Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Saturday, April 8, 2017
FALSE POSITION
FALSE POSITION AND MANKIND
"False position" is a mathematical idea, guess, methodology, starting point , premise, that its devisers and practitioners know is wrong.
But it is useful. It affords a place.
From this place, additional efforts are undertaken by people with aid of proven mathematical processes
to refine, to further improve, indeed to "perfect," their normative "false position" postulate that they knew, and agreed was inaccurate to start.
This ancient mathematical proof is really philosophy about the efficacy of mankind in space and time to find out what mankind is, why; all other questions flowing from this model of mathematical proofs.
Wikipedia says that "false position" is an "ancient...iterative numerical approximation" involving "trial and error" to solve problems arising in arithmetic , algebra , calculus, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_position_method
False position, naturally, is applied very broadly to many realms, in many forms, beyond mathematics. It has been used by mankind for tens of thousands of years to read, to write , calculate, devise, worship, navigate, approximate, to legislate.
Our nation, our republic, an alleged democracy, is enduring a state of false position, as it has long been, historically, which by iterations, by trial and error, has crept closer and closer to its primordial, conceptual ideals of liberty and justice for all.
But for the fact we are conditioned to be afraid of mathematics, as we have been conditioned to believe that the black Africans are, were inherently primitive and inferior, in everything, I would share the fact, the simple truth, with you--"truth," itself, but being another frightening apparition--that the false position method was the invention of this very same reviled African people in nations known as ancient Ethiopia and ancient Egypt, who used it to create the civilizations, whose wonderful treasures are unearthed by archaeology, by all who inquire .
In a philosophical sense, another ancient African expropriation, we humans are ever "becoming;" but are never arriving until no more.