Rabbit
There was once an old rabbit arrogant, yet elegant who knew nothing of Alice, the girl who would soon chase after him. Rabbit used to make his bow tie every day, wear his suit, quit his hole and finally visit the human’s garden. If he is lucky he would find a pipe and have a good smoke. His mind was always full, and for that very reason, he never jumped. He believed that if he ever jumped, the thoughts in his head would fly away and perhaps he would never find them again.
And so, he just walked, waddling along, almost like a person. He looked so much like a human that he refused to eat raw carrots. He always cooked them in a big pot and wouldn’t touch them without a pinch of salt and pepper. The rabbit kept, just in case, the citizenship papers from his faraway homeland. In the land where he now belonged, he had many friends a goose, a mouse, a dodo bird, an owl, a beaver, an eagle, and a crab.
Naturally, the rabbit wasn’t the only extraordinary one. His friends were just as fascinating the dodo bird, for instance, had a cane of his own. Yet the most astonishing thing about them all was their ability to speak like humans. But then again, who didn’t talk in that place? Even the playing cards could speak not just the animals
The reason behind all those strange and otherworldly things wasn’t magic or sorcery it was pure thought, the creation of the author’s mind. His imagination was so vast that animals alone weren’t enough; he even gave voices to playing cards
Lewis was not only a mathematician, but also a great writer. The book he created, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (or its original title, Alice’s Adventures Underground), is, in my opinion, not just a children’s book, but also a mathematics book.
If we consider that the rabbit Alice follows represents the abstract mathematics, everything will fall into place. Like mathematics, rabbit is a creature that sparks curiosity, forces one to follow it, and is both elegant.
And who, then, is the one drawn into the underground world of mathematics?
Alice
Alice? So who was Alice then? Could Alice be more than just a child?
In my first reading, Alice was a curious little girl, bored of lying around and doing nothing. She was tired of reading a book with no pictures. Then she followed a white rabbit, and we all know what happened next.
But in my second reading, Alice was someone entirely different. I started calling her Dr. Faust a curious man seeking truth, trying to break free from the hallucination of the life he was living. Of course, Faust and Alice share limitless curiosity. Accordingly, Mephisto would fulfill Dr. Faust’s wishes, trying to satisfy him with knowledge, pleasure, and love.
In return, if Dr. Faust found one of those moments given by Mephisto beautiful and said, “Verweile doch, du bist so schön” (“Stay a while, you are so beautiful”), meaning he no longer desired to know more, he would surrender his soul to Mephisto.
Alice, however, was braver than Faust in this context. Because basically there was a contract between Dr. Faust and Mephisto, however there was neither a conversation nor a contract between Alice and the white rabbit. Alice followed the rabbit purely out of curiosity. She drank potions from bottles and ate the cake she found on the table. But could Faust have drunk the potion or eaten the cake without any deal?
By the third time I read it, Alice had become Dr. Frankenstein. Like Victor Frankenstein, Alice was curious about the world around her and followed that curiosity. And then what happened? Alice created a whole new world(!) for herself — just as Frankenstein created a new creature. Like Frankenstein and Prometheus, Alice reached forbidden knowledge. For her, that knowledge was about how entirely new universes could be created through the power of the thinking.
For precisely these reasons, Alice is the person driven by curiosity means that Alice will do anything for the sake of it. If necessary, she dies and waits to be revived by Dr. Frankenstein. If necessary, she makes a pact with Mephisto to obtain the knowledge she seeks. If necessary, she reads, studies, memorizes, and explains all day long. It is curiosity that makes Alice the same as characters written long ago and those who will be born in the future.
Putting the literature aside, there is only one thing in the world that demands nothing but time and hard work and in return, it offers the whole world. Something used to explain nature, to communicate with others, to write, and to create new things. Didn’t the American Prometheus once use this language too?
That thing, the one that slips into people’s memories, minds, and thoughts, and drives them mad with curiosity, is mathematics. It’s so simple that it requires no equipment. You don’t need a lab full of scientific instruments like Victor Frankenstein, nor do you have to sell your soul like Faust. A pencil and a bunch of paper are enough.
It seems that every detailed sentence we build, every analogy we attempt, leads us to the same conclusion: we are all Alice. Yes, all of us. The hole the rabbit enters is a metaphor. It’s the world we dive into while learning and teaching mathematics. And, of course, we are the curious Alices.
As time goes on, perhaps our stories and our names change. Sometimes we’re Faust, sometimes Frankenstein, sometimes Oppenheimer. But before all else, we are the brave and curious ones who manage to follow the rabbit.
