Money, Mathematics, Matrices, and Madness
By John L. Waters
June 15, 2005
©Copyright 2005 by John L. Waters. All Rights Reserved
Counting pennies and other small objects consumes the interest of an autistic infant who is very thrifty and very much into physics. Indeed, this infant prodigy puts everything in its place. You'll find the child patiently counting markers on an abacus or eggs in a basket. You'll find the pecuniary savant marking the number of steps between Home and Aunt Bessie's Place. No prodigy at the piano, this unique savant fills jars with burnt match heads, dead pine needles, ladybugs, broken off rose buds, or even cigarette butts picked up off the sidewalk.
An'
The kid goes hummmah hummmah hummmah
Ricka-tick- rockin' from toes to head
Hummmah hummmah hummmah hummmah
Jus’ Hummin' an' rockin' on his bed.
The physics prodigy is madly in love with creation. This devotion is even labelled insanity. How very confusing our language is! Because words are so confusing, the prodigy is slow to speak, think, and write words. The label applied to a child like this is "retarded," "PDD," or "autistic." Who would have ever thought that so much TALENT, DEVOTION, and LOVE would be confused with a mental DISABILITY? Is this English or gibberish?
An'
The kid goes hummmah hummmah hummmah
Ricka-tick- rockin' from toes to head
Hummmah hummmah hummmah hummmah
Jus’ Hummin' an' rockin' on his bed.
Disabled or not, the savant studies matrices. A matrix is a structure which holds objects or values fixed in place. For example, when you create a tic-tac-toe gameboard by drawing two horizontal lines and then two vertical lines, you are creating a matrix. The tic-tac-toe players create a matrix. Tic-tac-toe is not about winning! Matrices are what tic-tac-toe is all about. In a similar way, to a prodigy composing a paragraph in English is creating a matrix. One word goes into each space of the matrix. Indeed, even poets work with matrices and do mathematics, even though our words conceal the math. This is why, to a mathematical prodigy, words SUCK. The autistic child keeps drawing patterns, not talking and listening to talk.
Non-autistic children quickly and eagerly learn to talk and think and win tic-tac-toe games. They use matrices without caring about matrices. They miss the point! But later in life, a student who has mathematical aptitude can study matrix algebra. Regrettably, though, mathematics professors usually just emphasize the use of matrix algebra in solving systems of linear equations. Poets usually don't study linear equations, though, and psychologists usually don't study very much mathematics. This lack of familiarity with mathematics makes it hard for professional psychologists to understand a child who is autistic. Nor can such a prodigy explain this subject to psychologists. The preverbal intelligence remains cut off from people.
An'
The kid goes hummmah hummmah hummmah
Ricka-tick- rockin' from toes to head
Hummmah hummmah hummmah hummmah
Jus’ Hummin' an' rockin' on his bed.
The unusual child spends hours a day collecting coins, tacks, pebbles, or burnt matches and placing them inside of a jar and then taking them out again and arranging them in patterns all over the floor, over and over again showing people the very essence of human language, learning, thought, expression, and comprehension itself. But in this child's autism the whole body is talking, not just the mouth and the face. Perhaps this is why people can't understand autism.
In the physics prodigy and in autism itself, money is the limiting factor. In the prodigy there is a superabundance of energy and talent! There is very little money, however, to investigate the prodigy and bring researchers to his side. When money is hard to access, the wise parents keep the prodigy at home where he or she can continue developing the mouthless and wordless talent that good talkers and listeners don't readily understand. Indeed, school frightens the prodigy. This is why home is where the prodigy's heart is. The caregiver's problem is obtaining enough money to keep the prodigy at home and communicating in words the importance of the prodigy's communications.
An'
The kid goes hummmah hummmah hummmah
Ricka-tick- rockin' from toes to head
Hummmah hummmah hummmah hummmah
Jus’ Hummin' an' rockin' on his bed.
Talent has given the prodigy enough intelligence to express the very essence of language, learning, expression, and comprehension. Now, people who pay attention see the autistic savant sitting on the floor, taking cut flower buds out of a large peanut butter jar and lining them up in rows and colums like markers on a checkerboard. Today the matrix he fills in is a square. Today he is devoted to square shapes and matrices that define the square shape.
On the following day this savant's devotion is different. He arranges his rose buds in another pattern. The novelty isn't quite a circle, and when the boy is done with the ellipse, he puts a tail on it and calls it a "billoogee." Other people say it looks like a pollywog. The child spends hours making pollywog matrices or "billoogees." Later he constructs matrices of another shape. He has a word for each shape he makes, and none of the words he learned from anyone. The words he uses just come directly "from God." The prodigy's words don't necessarily denote numbers, and the prodigy's shapes don't necessarily suggest anything that anyone has ever seen before.
This particular prodigy has made valuable what nearly everyone else considers worthless. He has made worthless things into money. He fills jars with items that look alike, but they aren't shiny coins. This child collects burnt matches, old rusty nails, broken-off buds he calls "dillydoops," and other seemingly worthless objects and makes money out of them. To the prodigy this isn't play-pretend. This is reality, because in fact all of physical existence is composed in the same way, out of mathematical patterns. This is why, in presenting us one matrix after another, the speechless prodigy expresses the whole of creation itself.
Some people would say that each and every day this unusual child expresses The Divine. Whether or not this is true, it is certainly true that this boy is using his whole body to communicate, not just his mouth. Furthermore, the whole universe is talking to the prodigy, not just human beings. Moreover, arguing effectively against the existence of any named Divinity has nothing at all to do with the talent under discussion here. The preverbal intelligence exists and can be studied every day in autistic children and in the animal pets they love.
An'
The kid goes hummmah hummmah hummmah
Ricka-tick- rockin' from toes to head
Hummmah hummmah hummmah hummmah
Jus’ Hummin' an' rockin' on his bed.
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About the author: John L. Waters is an amateur psychologist and independent researcher on self-healing, integration, and
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