In this wonderful book by James Nickel, Mathematics: Is God Silent?, we find elegant explanations and illustrations of both phenomena mentioned in the previous two posts this week (the Golden Ratio and Fibonacci Sequence). Among the illustrations of these mathematical wonders in nature, Nickel includes the chambered nautilus, the storm clouds of a hurricane, the cochlea of the human ear, the spiral galaxy, and the structure of snowflakes (and other crystalline structures, as well).
This has become an important book to those of us in Christian schools, bceause it answers one of our frequent criticisms: "How do you teach 'Christian' math? That's one subject that's the same in both secular and Christian schools!"
But it isn't - as Nickel eloquently demonstrates, delving deeply into the history of the development of math. Citing such giants as Augustine, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton, this book makes an irrevocable case that there is no "neutral" subject, even math.
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