Vedic Maths for Aesthetic Education

What is the relationship between Vedic mathematics and Aesthetic education? Asking this question means dealing with at least two short circuits related to our common way of thinking. The first relates to the nature of this relationship. The underlying cognitive model of mathematics is one in which a subject learns, remembers and reproduces an object. But the nature of this mathematical object is still uncertain. The second short circuit is related to the meaning we commonly give to the term “aesthetic”, an adjective often placed in relation to beauty and the arts. Actually, it refers to a much wider field of experience - a branch of philosophy that studies all those processes and products strictly connected to the body: perception, intuition, imagination, taste, feeling. The paper aims at underlying how these faculties are at stake in Vedic mathematics starting from a very elementary level of investigation. It will be shown how mathematics is neither physics nor metaphysics, but a fictional actualization of a virtual potential: it is an aesthetic thought. Ultimately, the paper wants to highlight how the Vedic method offers itself as an example of “Spieltrieb”, a game between sensitivity and reason: a practice of creation and freedom, of multiplicity and unity that represents the aim of every authentic aesthetic education.