Defining Math

Credit to: 3blue1brown

In math, we strive and stickle with a pride,
to wash away all ambiguity.
And yet, definers cannot all decide
what “math” itself means. What an irony!
Perhaps a science, solving mysteries,
but happy to pursue what seems absurd.
Perhaps a brother of philosophies,
but with a rigid rigour in each word.
Computer science might be suitable,
but most of math is not computable.

Perhaps it is a language of its own,
which, as to english, has the most false friends.
Perhaps religion, where the truth alone
is worshiped, giving means as well as ends.
Perhaps a sister of creative arts,
but one arousing reason, not a sense.
Indeed it shares a number of its parts
with almost every study in some sense.
But it’s an orphan, floating in abstract,
and it alone encloses what’s exact