At the dinner, I was seated next to a 18-month-old. She slid her hand under a napkin and pulled it out again. Strangely, her hand was still there. She repeated this action many times, puzzled as to why her hand wasn’t vanishing. A few times, I pressed her hand from above the napkin to demonstrate that, not only did the hand still exist, but it retained all tactile functionality. This mystery of object permanence was baffling, and she concluded that future research was going to be necessary. First, though, there were cookies to eat. Continue reading “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics” →