WHY MATHEMATICS LOVES ART?

Abstract

It would seem that mathematicians - the servants of the most accurate and objective of the sciences - should be far from art, filled with emotions and subjective experiences. However, on the contrary, it is well known that both great and ordinary mathematicians love art and are its subtle connoisseurs. The paper presents a number of such examples. An attempt was made to consider the phenomenon of the internal kinship of mathematics and art from the standpoint of neurobiology was made. Based on the triune brain concept, a significant influence of emotions (limbic system or “emotional brain”) on the work of the neocortex is noted. Higher-order emotions – a sense of beauty and harmony – stimulate rational thinking and ensure overcome the “logical gap” called intuition. The location of unimodal speech zones in the left “mathematical” hemisphere provides the shortest neural connections between them and, possibly, is the neurobiological basis of the internal relationship between mathematics and literature (in particular poetry).