Introduction:  Imagine, if you will,  the following scenario.  It’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon and you’re enjoying a rare moment of inactivity with your loved one on the riverbank, perhaps admiring the gothic façade of the church which has stood on the opposite side of that river for centuries.  All of a sudden, your partner brings up the subject of the product rule of differentiable functions!  Needless to say, you are intrigued, if not a little bewildered at the motives behind their introduction of such a topic into the conversation.  You say that this does indeed sound like a very useful rule, but, being a conscientious member of the scientific community, you feel compelled to express your concern over how they can be certain that this rule holds true for all cases.  Upon doing so, your partner fixes you with a contemptuous look and informs you that they have seen and heard this rule quoted by innumerable respected and accomplished mathematicians and, furthermore, they themselves have never come across any circumstances which have given good reason to doubt that the product rule does indeed hold true.  Now, being a budding applied mathematician or physical scientist (not an engineer though, their kind is incapable of love and so this situation could never arise for them), this seems like a perfectly reasonable justification and you happily accept what they say and gratefully assimilate said product rule into your mathematical knowledge base.

It all sounds innocent enough, does it not?  And it would be, if only it ended there.

The following week, you’re sitting in a pleasantly run down café, contemplatively munching on a sausage and once again accompanied by your loved one.  Your beloved looks in your direction and whispers the power rule of differentiable functions in your direction.  Your response is similar to the one you issued last time something like this happened.  The object of your passion heaves a heavy sigh and shakes their head sorrowfully at your impudence.  Once again they tell you that it’s simply an established mathematical fact, this time going as far as to list the mathematical achievements of the lecturer who first imparted this knowledge to them.  You duely accept that their justification is a good one, even if their manner is slightly upsetting, and thank them for being so generous with their knowledge, only for a moment noticing the flicker of pure malevolence in their eyes as you do so.

This scenario repeats itself in a myriad of different forms for weeks and months, each time you feel less and less inclined to question what you are being taught.  You don’t even notice that, as you become more and more accepting of what you are told, your partner’s claims become wilder, more outrageous, and progressively further removed from the world of Science and Mathematics.  Within a year you find yourself wearing a leather mask, crawling around on all fours with weights attached to your erogenous zones, and barking like a dog for the pleasure and amusement of your significant other, all because they told you to and apparently have it on good authority that this is the correct way to conduct yourself in their presence.  How you envy the pure mathematician who, from the very start, is immune to such schemes!  How you envy even the engineer, who simply meets the demands of his biologically predetermined breeding partner with a feral growl and a threatening wave of his fire stick!  Then, it hits you, envying engineers…now you truly know that all hope has been extinguished in your darkened world.