The situation that led to the creation of Thales and Friends is not new: for the past two centuries, mathematics has suffered from the side-effects of its explosive expansion. In some ways, it has become a victim of its own successes, increasingly isolating itself in a brilliantly gilded cage. This statement may shock many mathematicians, who are justly proud of the exalted nature of the conceptual universe they inhabit, as also a large section of the general public who are constantly bombarded with messages of the power of the application of mathematics to the real world. But even so, the rift between mathematics and the culture at large is there; it becomes glaringly obvious if we look at the huge distance between the work of contemporary frontier-of-knowledge mathematics and public understanding of the field. The caricature of the ‘absent-minded mathematician’ is unfortunately not too far from the general culture’s actual conception of mathematics as the realm of otherworldly solitary geniuses who alone have access to its esoteric secrets, secrets of little or no interest to the rest of the world.

Yet, though its methodology is undoubtedly based to a large extent on abstraction and deductive rigor – in other words, the two attributes that by their very nature set it apart from the realities of human existence –, mathematics is an inextricable part of the great adventure of human ideas with profound links not only to the exact sciences but also to the very staples of humanist culture, philosophy, history, the human sciences, literature and art. And it is precisely for this reason that so many aspects of human activity are enriched by being in dialogue with mathematics. But such a process also aids mathematics itself: as over-specialization has broken the discipline down to a host of isolated subfields, often with little or no internal communication, developing languages in which one can also think and talk intelligently about mathematics at levels that are not highly technical will directly contribute to mathematicians’ developing a deeper understanding of their science.

Believing in the crucial importance of this process, we in Thales and Friends are dedicated to creating bridges, to and from mathematics. Clearly, we will not be the first to be doing so. In recent years, more especially, there has been an increasing number of fruitful sorties into the cultural gap, as for example: some worthwhile attempts to enlarge the scope of the more culturally-aware fields of the philosophy and history of science to include mathematics; efforts to adapt the methods of the cognitive and human sciences to understanding mathematical thinking and learning; and also, of course, the creation of works of art, both narrative and visual, that take their subjects from the world of mathematics.

All these are definitely steps in the right direction. But a lot more work is required to go further. We are convinced that we are not alone in our quest.

As the first of our own efforts to transcend the cultural divide we organized the international “Mathematics and Narrative” meeting, which was held from July 12-15, 2005, on the Greek island of Mykonos. In this, important mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, historians, writers and artists came together to discuss and explore the terra incognita separating mathematics from the culture-at-large. The success of this meeting shows to us the fruitfulness of a general direction of interdisciplinary investigation of mathematics viewed within a wider cultural context.

If you want see more about our activities in Greece, please click here