Published by Neville David Thomas on
There is something rather amusing about the fact that one of the most important mathematical breakthroughs of 2026 concerns something as ordinary as water.
We see water every day. We drink it, wash in it, swim in it and occasionally fall into it after having had a little too much to drink. We rarely give much thought to the extraordinary complexity of its movement.
Mathematicians, however, have been rather more interested.
The Navier–Stokes equations, which describe how fluids such as water and air move, have been troubling some of the world’s finest mathematical minds for generations. One of the questions associated with these equations remained unanswered for approximately 90 years and became one of the seven famous Millennium Prize Problems.
Then, in September 2026, OpenAI announced that an artificial intelligence system had produced a proposed solution.
This was no ordinary mathematical exercise. The system coordinated approximately 10,000 AI agents, which worked on the problem for around 88 hours. The resulting proof was subsequently formalized using Lean, a system that allows mathematical proofs to be checked with considerable precision.
OpenAI’s announcement was extraordinary. The Clay Mathematics Institute, which established the Millennium Prize Problems, subsequently acknowledged that the problem appeared to have been settled, although its formal evaluation process remains to be completed.
But there is something about this particular mathematical problem that I find especially interesting.
It provides a rather unexpected starting point for thinking about Buddhism, impermanence and the nature of existence.
And, as it happens, a certain Greek philosopher who lived approximately 2,500 years ago had already been thinking along similar lines.
Full article here: https://nevilledavidthomas.com/2026/11/01/the-river-the-whirlpool-and-the-self-what-mathematics-and-buddhism-have-in-common/
(Courtesy of https://thisbuddhistlife.com/2026/11/04/what-do-mathematics-and-buddhism-have-in-common/)
