Why do we learn math in school?

Beyond our formal educational years, we rarely need to integrate functions or "solve for x." But this is not why we learn it.

Math shapes one's understanding of the nature of our world. It teaches that the universe is intelligible and knowable — it has an inherent structure that can be understood by the beings living within it.

2500 years ago, the Greek polymath Pythagoras intuited that the universe is governed and formulated by math. When strolling past a blacksmith’s forge, he noticed that two hammers clanging at the same time sound harmonious together if one is twice as heavy as the other.

Following this logic, he later realized that the length of a string is inversely proportional to the pitch of the musical note it produces. Thus, music is math, and beauty can be created by arranging things mathematically…

If music and math are essentially the same thing, what if the mathematical structure of the entire universe could also be understood as a work of music?

This worldview permeated Europe for 2000 years, as educators in the Middle Ages believed that each discipline of the quadrivium — arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy — readied the mind (and soul) for the next discipline. Later on, music and math would become preparations for learning philosophy.

Math and music, in this sense, were understood as the tools you need to begin to contemplate truth.

If the universe is inherently mathematical, then a mathematical education forms the kind of person who can see reality as meaningful. Math gives structure to your thinking, and invites you to contemplate the mystery of this reality we inhabit.