QUANTA MAGAZINE: The title of your talk was “Mathematics for Human Flourishing.” Flourishing is a big idea — what do you have in mind by it?

FRANCIS SU: When I think of human flourishing, I’m thinking of something close to Aristotle’s definition, which is activity in accordance with virtue. For instance, each of the basic desires that I mentioned in my talk is a mark of flourishing. If you have a playful mind or a playful spirit, or you’re seeking truth, or pursuing beauty, or fighting for justice, or loving another human being — these are activities that line up with certain virtues. Maybe a more modern way of thinking about it is living up to your potential, in some sense, though I wouldn’t just limit it to that. If I am loving somebody well, that’s living up to a certain potential that I have to be able to love somebody well.

And how does mathematics promote human flourishing?

It builds skills that allow people to do things they might otherwise not have been able to do or experience. If I learn mathematics and I become a better thinker, I develop perseverance, because I know what it’s like to wrestle with a hard problem, and I develop hopefulness that I will actually solve these problems. And some people experience a kind of transcendent wonder that they’re seeing something true about the universe. That’s a source of joy and flourishing.

Math helps us do these things. And when we talk about teaching mathematics, sometimes we forget these larger virtues that we are seeking to cultivate in our students. Teaching mathematics shouldn’t be about sending everybody to a Ph.D. program. That’s a very narrow view of what it means to do mathematics. It shouldn’t mean just teaching people a bunch of facts. That’s also a very narrow view of what mathematics is. What we’re really doing is training habits of mind, and those habits of mind allow people to flourish no matter what profession they go into.

Several times in your talk you quoted Simone Weil, the French philosopher (and sibling of the famed mathematician André Weil), who wrote, “Every being cries out silently to be read differently.” Why did you choose that quote?

I chose it because it says in a very succinct way what the problem is, what causes injustice — we judge, and we don’t judge correctly. So “read” means “judged,” of course. We read people differently than they actually are.

And how does that apply to the math community?

We do this in lots of different ways. I think part of it is that we have a picture of who actually can succeed in math. Some of that picture has been developed because the only examples we’ve seen so far are people who come from particular backgrounds. We’re not used to, for instance, seeing African-Americans at a math conference, although it’s become more and more common.

We’re not used to seeing kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in college or grad school. So what I was trying to say is: If we’re looking for talent, why are we choosing for background? If we really want to have a more diverse set of people in mathematical sciences, we have to take into account the structural barriers that make it hard for people from disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed in math.

We’ve been hearing more about how these kinds of educational barriers arise in primary and secondary school. Do you argue that they arise in undergraduate and graduate programs as well?

That’s right. At every stage we’re losing people. So if you look at some of the studies people are doing now about people who take Calculus 1, and how many of them go on to take Calculus 2, you’ll find basically that we’re losing women and minorities at these critical junctures. This happens for reasons that we can only speculate about. But I’m sure some of it has to do with people in these groups not seeing themselves as belonging in math, possibly because of a negative culture and an unwelcome climate, or because of things that professors or other students are doing to discourage people from continuing.

The obvious problem with this attrition is that when mathematics draws from a smaller pool, we end up with fewer talented mathematicians. But you emphasized in your speech that denying people math is actually denying them an opportunity to flourish.

Math can contribute in a broad way to every person’s life whether that person actually becomes a mathematician or not. The goal of broadly getting people to appreciate math is not at odds with bringing more people into deep mathematics. Connect with people in a deep way and you’re going to draw more people into mathematics. Some of them, more of them, are going to go to graduate school, and that will necessarily happen if you address some of these deep desires — for love, truth, beauty, justice, play. If you address some of these deep themes you’re going to get more people and a more diverse set of people in deep mathematics.

Some of those desires are easier to relate to math than others. I think people have a somewhat intuitive sense of how a desire for truth or beauty might be realized through math. But you spent a lot of your talk on justice. How does that relate to mathematics?

Justice is a desire that people have, and so it leads to a certain virtue which is to become a just person, somebody who cares about fighting for things that defend basic human dignity. I spent the most time discussing justice in my talk mainly because I feel that our mathematics community can do better; we can become more just. I see a lot of ways in which we can do better and become more virtuous as a community.