Exploring Technology in a Wizard World
Chapter 418 - 417 Key of Truth

Chapter 418: Chapter 417 Key of Truth

At the end of the second floor, within the room.

This was a very large room, several dozen square meters in size, with every corner clean and tidy. The bedding on the bed had been freshly changed, and a faint fragrance of flowers filled the air, giving off a comfortable feeling.

Richard nodded with satisfaction and sat down at the desk. Pandora, on the other hand, walked straight to the soft bed, eyes fixated as if bewitched, and "thump" sat onto the bed without uttering a word, just sitting there, spacing out continuously.

This behavior of Pandora’s had been going on for several days now.

The reason for this was that, after the initial excitement of leaving White Stone City had passed, Pandora remembered her experiences in White Stone City and felt utterly useless. She wasn’t good at learning anything and couldn’t even fight well. She was indeed a little heartbroken.

After some serious reflection, Pandora made a very formal request to Richard, expressing her desire to learn something truly useful from him so that she wouldn’t be helpless in similar situations in the future.

Truly useful!

Pandora emphasized these four words strongly.

Upon studying, Richard found that Pandora wasn’t joking. He genuinely gave it some thought.

What are the truly useful things?

What is it that’s truly useful?

Are combat skills useful? Very. Yet they are not needed for conducting experiments. Even if you are a master fighter, it is of no help in doing experiments, and that is why Pandora sometimes felt defeated.

Then, are experiments useful? Yes, they are, but excelling in them doesn’t enhance fighting ability. Having Pandora conduct experiments was essentially a waste of her formidable combat skills.

Truthfully, many things that are considered useful are characterized by their one-sidedness and limitations. They can only function in one or a few fields, and once outside that scope, they become useless.

Even scientific knowledge is so.

A person may be strong in the field of biology, but if you throw them into a mechanical factory, they’d be at a loss.

A person may have outstanding contributions in the field of mechanical engineering, but if you ask them to switch to cultivating cells, they too would be clueless.

What, then, is truly useful? What can be applied everywhere without any limits after it’s learned?

In other words, what is the essence of science? What is at the core of everything?

There is only one answer to this, and that is—mathematics.

Yes, mathematics.

At the very foundation of the entire world, the entire rational and scientific world, there lies an unshakable cornerstone: mathematics. It is upon this cornerstone of mathematics that physics, chemistry, biology, and so on are built.

The entire world, the truths of the entire world, every law, and formula, are all constructed upon the foundation of mathematics.

For example, Newton discovered his second law: the magnitude of the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the force acting upon it, inversely proportional to the mass of the object, and directly proportional to the reciprocal of the mass.

That is, F=m*a.

F=m*a, such a concise and holy formula. Within the realm of classical mechanics, nothing can contradict it.

But why is this formula the way it is? How could Newton so precisely articulate this formula? Did he peel open the entire world and glimpse the real principles of the universe?

Clearly, he did not.

Actually, Newton did not glimpse any universal principles. The formula exists because he first defined F, m, a, and then combined them into this formula.

Similarly, if he’d wanted, he could have made the formula more complicated, like F=d*t*g or W=5h*r*k*￥/2472, for instance.

Then all the basic concepts of classical mechanics might need to be redefined to explain the letters in the formula. But no matter what the basic concepts are, within this system, everything is internally consistent and can be used to explain the phenomena of motion.

So, it’s not that Newton discovered the principles of the world, rather he proposed a hypothesis that happened to explain the phenomena of the world.

The same is true for other disciplines, which have been constructed top-down, internally consistent within themselves and externally capable of explaining the various manifestations of the world’s operations.

This is how the entire body of technology came about.

First, there is a hypothesis, then validation, and finally, it becomes a theorem.

This is why the renowned philosopher of science, Carl Popper, proposed that the criterion for judging whether a theory (proposition) is scientific is its falsifiability. That is, a theory is considered unscientific if there exists a single phenomenon that does not conform to it; however, until such a phenomenon is found, it is deemed scientific within the corresponding field.

Science has never claimed to be everything in the world or to explain everything. It is simply seen as a careful and rigorous method for exploring the world.

It can even be said that science is just an imagination, a highly meticulous and meticulously linked chain of imagination, and until a flaw in this imagination can be found, it is considered the truth.

The reason scientific imagination can be so meticulous and tightly linked is that it is based on mathematics.

All imagination starts from the most basic mathematics, from the numerical operations beginning with 1+1=2.

Only if you believe 1+1=2 to be correct do you have integers, prime numbers, exponential functions, calculus, functions, relativity, nuclear physics, Quantum Science, and so on.

Just like Newton defined F, m, and a, there came F=m*a.

No one has glimpsed the principles of the world, but mathematics has assumed and simulated the principles of the world.

That is mathematics, and it is the most useful thing.

If a person can master mathematics, it means they have the most powerful ability—the ability to see through the essence of the world.

Thus, in modern Earth’s most cutting-edge fields—rockets, satellites, nuclear weapons, finance—there is nothing that does not require mathematics.

Mathematics is truly a useful thing, the Key of Truth.

After this contemplation, Richard decided to teach Pandora mathematics.

And so, the bewitched Pandora of now came to be.

Considering Pandora’s foundation, Richard did not start off by teaching her difficult concepts like Quadratic Equations, Geometry, or Definite Integrals. He set aside all those things and began with something of an elementary school level from modern Earth.

What Richard taught was... the Four Operations.

Truth be told, it wasn’t even the entirety of the Four Operations, but just a part of them, the essence of ancient Chinese reckoning that was summarized from experience, the unique mathematical essence invented during the Spring and Autumn Period—an existence unique in the world.

Yes, the Multiplication Table.

One times one equals one.

One times two equals two, two times two equals four.

One times three equals three, two times three equals six...

Starting from the first day after leaving White Stone City, Richard taught Pandora the entire Multiplication Table, and since then, she had been digesting it.

One day, two days, three days... Up to today, it had been five days.

These five days, Pandora had been trying hard to memorize.