Everything That Rises

“Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love… For everything that rises must converge.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In my introductory analysis course[1] course in college, one day he began a lecture by writing on the chalkboard “everything that rises, must converge.” He then asked us if we got the reference. Though, I’d read and enjoyed some of Flannery O’Connor’s works, I didn’t realize it was in reference to her short story. When one of my classmates offered the correct answer, my professor quipped, “O’Connor almost got it right, it should be — everything that rises and is bounded, must converge[2].”

This is one of the few theorems I remember from collegiate mathematics. While the education informed how I think, most of the mathematical theorems I once knew I’ve now forgotten. The reason why I remember this theorem so well is that my professor took an interdisciplinary approach to instruction. He used the title of a classic short story to get us hooked on the lecture.

The anti-intellectual approach is to create a false dichotomy between writing and math — what some characterize as right brain versus left brain. But, the truth is that you use your entire brain through the course of your life and to continue to rise in greater knowledge you must expose yourself to a variety of subjects.

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Notes

[1] Analysis is the field of math that describes why calculus works.

[2] This is what is known as a monotone convergence theorem.