To understand math is to reprogram your intuition. It is, above all, a matter of neuroplasticity. The secret techniques of mathematicians are neither more nor less paranormal than those that allowed Ben Underwood to see the world by clicking his tongue. As long as we treated our mental activity as something magical, mathematics was fundamentally im

Mathematics is a practice rather than knowledge. Mathematicians understand better than anyone the objects they’re working on, but their mathematical intuition can never become omnipotent. Objects they aren’t familiar with still raise difficulties. You can be an exceptional

education. It tries to make things easier rather than more difficult. You can compare it to meditation, yoga, rock climbing, or martial arts. It includes techniques to overcome our fears, conquer our flight reflex in the face of the unknown, and find pleasure in being contradicted. The method’s exact scope is actually broader than math. It’s a univ

He notes that the difficulty is of an emotional and nonintellectual order. It arises from our social need to make believe, for others as for ourselves, that we understand what in reality we do not. It’s a bit like the Fosbury flop: to adopt the correct position, you have to overcome the flight reflex that makes us believe that we’re putting ourselv

But the confidence with which mathematicians have blundered into these mistakes and their inability to acknowledge even the possibility of error in these matters are, I think, connected with an ancient and widespread confusion between the methods of mathematics and its subject-matter.