Speechless

One of my favorite classes this year has been, by far, my History Honors class. This is because my history professor isn't like those people you see on the history channel where they fill your head with dates and names in that boring obnoxious voice. No, this professor is a theoretical historian...in other words, he's a philosophic historian. He says that history isn't based on memorizing dates and names of people and times that are passed and long since dead. No, its looking back in time and understanding the why it happened and how it happened so we can apply some of its theories on future events. He claims that by understanding the past we can see where our future is headed. 

See why I love this class? For an hour and a half every two days me and several other students sit in a circle and talk about all sorts of things, from politics to religion to economy... I think we about covered every topic out there. And the best part is that the professor isn't one of those opinionated people that you have to be careful what you say around. Quite the contrary. He wants us to speak our minds, he wants to know and learn from our different perspectives, he wants to take everything into account. Sometimes, if we keep refuting our idea he'll contradict it on purpose just to test our conviction of its reliability, even if he latter admits we were right. "Playing Devils Advocate" he says. 

 There is probably nothing that the man hasn't thought of. He has been teaching for almost 25 years, and he's never taught anything besides history. That means he must've heard all sorts of ideas and opinions and found ways to refute them all...or so I thought.

The other day we were reading the text "New essays on human understanding" by G.W. Leibniz in which the author was comparing mathematics to reason. My professor was agreeing with him and explaining what Leibniz meant by that statement. But for some reason it sounded odd to me. So when I raised my hand and was allowed to speak I voiced my doubts.

"I think that what he says is only half true. We're assuming that math is perfect. But can  we affirm that the Pythagorean theorem is always right just because we did several exercises? Have we tested with all examples known to man? So we have to assume before hand that math is imperfect just as is reason. Therefore how can you base on imperfect thing on another imperfect thing?"

The professor gazed at me with his his mouth half open as if preparing to answer when all of a sudden his eyes grow round in surprise and his jaw drops an extra milometer. Then he tilts his head to the side and gazes at the ceiling in thought. 

"Huh..." he sighs.

My classmates were looking at me in awe. 

"You left the professor speechless...What have you done?" a girl teased.

"Can you repeat the question?" another guy asked. Probably trying to see if he could answer me before the professor did.

All I know is while I waited for my answer I couldn't help but hold back a smug smile. I had outsmarted the him. The guy who thought he knew and heard it all. Now he was the one who was going to go home with something to think about for a change.