"Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b.1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish 'golden age' of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction. Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is known as the 'father of existentialism', but at least as important are his critiques of Hegel and of the German romantics, his contributions to the development of modernism, his literary experimentation, his vivid re-presentation of biblical figures to bring out their modern relevance, his invention of key concepts which have been explored and redeployed by thinkers ever since, his interventions in contemporary Danish church politics, and his fervent attempts to analyse and revitalise Christian faith. Kierkegaard burned with the passion of a religious poet, was armed with extraordinary dialectical talent, and drew on vast resources of erudition." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

For our purposes, SÖREN KIERKEGAARD was credited with the insightful epigram, "Life can only be understood backward, but must be lived forward."

This is a profound intuition. But only by MATH can we articulate its implications and consequences.

Briefly,

1. let "o" denote a mathematical OPERATION (addition, multiplication, exponentiation, etc.);
2. let "O" denote its OPERAND (addend, multiplier, power, etc);
3. let "V" denote the INVERSE OPERAND (say, negative of an addend, or reciprocal of a multiplier, etc.);
4. let "I" denote the IDENTITY ELEMENT of the OPERATION such that I o e = e o I = e, for any ELEMENT e of THE SYSTEM.
5. Then consider O o V = V o O = I. "OPERATION and INVERSE cancel each other out".
6. Therefore, by (4), (5), we find: e o (O o V) = (V o O) o e = e o I = e, for any ELEMENT e of THE SYSTEM.

And Math Students will recognize that (5) invokes A MATHEMATICALGROUP, the MODEL for "Our Laws of Nature"! (Associativity? Not to worry. CLOSURE and INVERSE imply THE GROUP. Associativity comes along. Enjoy.)

Students should be taught that the effort to FIND INVERSES and MAKE THEM TOTAL (CLOSURE) explains all THE NUMBER SYSTEMS of ARITHMETIC. Readers of my later files will also recognize (5) as embodying AN ANTITONE, a STRATEGY which may be "behind every process of Nature"!

Now, ain't that a kik in the fundament!

Even before learning about the "kikbak" from Kierkegaard, I'd learn to work backwards because of "Professor Backwards".

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