X Day From the website Scotland: St. Andrew —
Xangans without Scots ancestry may still celebrate by displaying the following symbol: Posted 11/30/2002 at 4:28 PM |
Archetypal Criticism My previous note includes the following: "For a... literary antidote to postmodernist nihilism, see Archetypal Theory and Criticism, by Glen R. Gill."
Carl Gustav Jung, from a strongly Protestant background, has been vilified as an "Aryan Christ" by Catholics and Jews. To counteract this vilification, here are two links:
Posted 11/30/2002 at 2:13 PM |
A Logocentric Archetype Today we examine the relativist, nominalist, leftist, nihilist, despairing, depressing, absurd, and abominable work of Samuel Beckett, darling of the postmodernists. One lens through which to view Beckett is an essay by Jennifer Martin, "Beckettian Drama as Protest: A Postmodern Examination of the 'Delogocentering' of Language." Martin begins her essay with two quotations: one from the contemptible French twerp Jacques Derrida, and one from Beckett's masterpiece of stupidity, Molloy. For a logocentric deconstruction of Derrida, see my note, "The Shining of May 29," which demonstrates how Derrida attempts to convert a rather important mathematical result to his brand of nauseating and pretentious nonsense, and of course gets it wrong. For a logocentric deconstruction of Molloy, consider the following passage: "I took advantage of being at the seaside to lay in a store of sucking-stones. They were pebbles but I call them stones.... I distributed them equally among my four pockets, and sucked them turn and turn about. This raised a problem which I first solved in the following way. I had say sixteen stones, four in each of my four pockets these being the two pockets of my trousers and the two pockets of my greatcoat. Taking a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my greatcoat, which I replaced by the stone which was in my mouth, as soon as I had finished sucking it. Thus there were still four stones in each of my four pockets, but not quite the same stones....But this solution did not satisfy me fully. For it did not escape me that, by an extraordinary hazard, the four stones circulating thus might always be the same four." Beckett is describing, in great detail, how a damned moron might approach the extraordinarily beautiful mathematical discipline known as group theory, founded by the French anticleric and leftist Evariste Galois. Disciples of Derrida may play at mimicking the politics of Galois, but will never come close to imitating his genius. For a worthwhile discussion of permutation groups acting on a set of 16 elements, see R. D. Carmichael's masterly work, Introduction to the Theory of Groups of Finite Order, Ginn, Boston, 1937, reprinted by Dover, New York, 1956. There are at least two ways of approaching permutations on 16 elements in what Pascal calls "l'esprit géométrique." My website Diamond Theory discusses the action of the affine group in a four-dimensional finite geometry of 16 points. For a four-dimensional euclidean hypercube, or tesseract, with 16 vertices, see the highly logocentric movable illustration by Harry J. Smith. The concept of a tesseract was made famous, though seen through a glass darkly, by the Christian writer Madeleine L'Engle in her novel for children and young adults, A Wrinkle in Tme. This tesseract may serve as an archetype for what Pascal, Simone Weil (see my earlier notes), Harry J. Smith, and Madeleine L'Engle might, borrowing their enemies' language, call their "logocentric" philosophy. For a more literary antidote to postmodernist nihilism, see Archetypal Theory and Criticism, by Glen R. Gill. For a discussion of the full range of meaning of the word "logos," which has rational as well as religious connotations, click here. Posted 11/29/2002 at 1:06 PM |
On Madeleine L'Engle's birthday: There is such a thing as a tesseract. Posted 11/29/2002 at 7:00 AM |
Waiting for Logos Searching for background on the phrase "logos and logic" in yesterday's "Notes toward a Supreme Fact," I found this passage:
The anima and other Jungian concepts are used to analyze Wallace Stevens in an excellent essay by Michael Bryson, "The Quest for the Fiction of an Absolute." Part of Bryson's motivation in this essay is the conflict between the trendy leftist nominalism of postmodern critics and the conservative realism of more traditional critics: "David Jarraway, in his Stevens and the Question of Belief, writes about a Stevens figured as a proto-deconstructionist, insisting on 'Steven's insistence on dismantling the logocentric models of belief' (311) in 'An Ordinary Evening in New Haven.' In opposition to these readings comes a work like Janet McCann's Wallace Stevens Revisited: 'The Celestial Possible', in which the claim is made (speaking of the post-1940 period of Stevens' life) that 'God preoccupied him for the rest of his career.'" Here "logocentric" is a buzz word for "Christian." Stevens, unlike the postmodernists, was not anti-Christian. He did, however, see that the old structures of belief could not be maintained indefinitely, and pondered what could be found to replace them. "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction" deals with this problem. In his essay on Stevens' "Notes," Bryson emphasizes the "negative capability" of Keats as a contemplative technique: "The willingness to exist in a state of negative capability, to accept that sometimes what we are seeking is not that which reason can impose...." For some related material, see Simone Weil's remarks on Electra waiting for her brother Orestes. Simone Weil's brother was one of the greatest mathematicians of the past century, André Weil.
Compare her remarks on waiting for Orestes with the following passage from Waiting for God:
Weil concludes the preceding essay with the following passage:
This biblical metaphor is also echoed in the work of Pascal, who combined in one person the theological talent of Simone Weil and the mathematical talent of her brother. After discussing how proofs should be written, Pascal says
The Diamond Archetype. Posted 11/27/2002 at 11:30 PM |
Andante Cantabile As we prepare to see publicity for Russell Crowe in a new role, that of Captain Jack Aubrey in "The Far Side of the World," based on Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, we bid farewell to Patti LaBelle and her Ya-Ya, and say hello to a piece more attuned to Aubrey's tastes. This site's background music is now Mozart's Duo for Violin and Viola in Bb, K.424, 2, andante cantabile. Posted 11/26/2002 at 11:00 PM |
Notes toward a Supreme Fact In "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction," Wallace Stevens lists criteria for a work of the imagination:
For a work that seems to satisfy these criteria, see the movable images at my diamond theory website. Central to these images is the interplay of rational sides and irrational diagonals in square subimages.
Recall that "logos" in Greek means "ratio," as well as (human or divine) "word." Thus when I read the following words of Simone Weil today, I thought of Stevens.
In the conclusion of Section 3, Canto X, of "Notes," Stevens says
This is the logoi alogoi of Simone Weil. Posted 11/26/2002 at 10:00 PM |
Dancing about Architecture The title's origin is obscure, but its immediate source is a weblog entry and ensuing comments: "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.'' A related quote: "At the still point, there the dance is." -- T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton" in Four Quartets "Eliot by his own admission took 'the still point of the turning world' in 'Burnt Norton' from the Fool in Williams's The Greater Trumps." -- Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings (1978), Ballantine Books, 1981, page 106. Carpenter cites an "unpublished journal of Mary Trevelyan (in possession of the author)." The following was written this morning as a comment on a weblog entry, but may stand on its own as a partial description of Eliot's and Williams's "dance." Three sermons on the Fool card, each related to Charles Williams's novel The Greater Trumps: To Play the Fool, "Here is the Church, For some architecture that may or may not be worth dancing about, see the illustrations to Simone Weil's remarks in my note of November 25, 2002, "The Artist's Signature." Posted 11/26/2002 at 10:23 AM |
ART WARS From SUSAN WEIL
The Vesica Piscis, See also the Posted 11/25/2002 at 3:43 PM |
Swashbucklers and Misfits There are two theories of truth, according to a a book on the history of geometry — The "Story Theory" and the "Diamond Theory." For those who prefer the story theory... From a review by Brian Hayes of A Beautiful Mind: "Mathematical genius is rare enough. Cloaked in madness, or wrapped in serious eccentricity, it's the stuff legends are made of. There are brilliant and productive mathematicians who go to the office from nine to five, play tennis on the weekend, and worry about fixing the gearbox in the Volvo. Not many of them become the subjects of popular biographies. Instead we read about the great swashbucklers and misfits of mathematics, whose stories combine genius with high romance or eccentricity."
Hollywood has recently given us a mathematical Russell Crowe. For a somewhat tougher sell, Marilyn Monroe as a mathematician, see "Insignificance," 1985: "Marilyn Monroe on her hands and knees explains the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein." For a combination of misfit and swashbuckler in one Holy Name, see today's earlier note, "The Artist's Signature." See also my note of October 4, 2002, on Michelangelo, and the description of "the face of God" in this review. Posted 11/25/2002 at 1:00 PM |
Practice, Man, Practice
for the time being, to honor Patti LaBelle's performances at Carnegie Hall. Posted 11/25/2002 at 12:25 PM |
The Artist's Signature This title is taken from the final chapter of Carl Sagan's novel Contact. "There might be a game in which paper figures were put together to form a story, or at any rate were somehow assembled. The materials might be collected and stored in a scrap-book, full of pictures and anecdotes. The child might then take various bits from the scrap-book to put into the construction; and he might take a considerable picture because it had something in it which he wanted and he might just include the rest because it was there.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief “Not games. Puzzles. Big difference. That’s a whole other matter. All art — symphonies, architecture, novels — it’s all puzzles. The fitting together of notes, the fitting together of words have by their very nature a puzzle aspect. It’s the creation of form out of chaos. And I believe in form.” — Stephen Sondheim, in Stephen Schiff, Deconstructing Sondheim,” The New Yorker, March 8, 1993, p. 76
This passage from Weil is quoted in "He would leave enigmatic messages on blackboards, — Brian Hayes on John Nash, "I have a friend who is a Chief of the Aniunkwia (Cherokee) people and I asked him the name of the Creator in which — "Tank" (of Taino ancestry), Bronx, NY, Wednesday, April 17, 2002 From a website reviewing books published by "Master and Commander (Patrick O'Brian)"
1/17/02: NEW YORK (Variety) - Russell Crowe is negotiating to star in 20th Century Fox's "Master and Commander,'' the Peter Weir-directed adaptation of the Patrick O'Brian book series. Hmmm. *For another religious interpretation of this phrase, see my note of October 4, 2002, "The Agony and the Ya-Ya." Posted 11/25/2002 at 11:32 AM |
In honor of Results of a Google search - Searched the web for "Joyce and Aquinas" "William T. Noon". Results 1-5 of about 15:
Dogma
Posted 11/24/2002 at 7:47 PM |
Harvard 20, Yale 13Posted 11/23/2002 at 5:55 PM |
Pie "According to the Bible, the ancient Hebrews had apparently thought that pi was exactly equal to three." "The three men I admire the most, Those days are not entirely forgotten in Texas. *November 22 is the feast day of Trivia quiz: What is the world's Posted 11/23/2002 at 9:11 AM |
This space is reserved for a glass slipper. Posted 11/22/2002 at 11:59 PM |
Trinity On this date in 1963...
all died. On the bright side: On this date, Tarzan (John Clayton III, the future Lord Greystoke) was born and Ravel's "Bolero" was first performed. Posted 11/22/2002 at 11:30 PM |
Jack London died on this date. On the other hand, Hoagy Carmichael, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Mariel Hemingway were born. Posted 11/22/2002 at 11:00 PM |
In memory of Arthur T. Winfree: Professor Arthur T. Winfree died on November 5, 2002.
Posted 11/22/2002 at 8:23 PM |
Pray This brief heading echoes the title of the latest novel by Michael Crichton, perhaps the best-known member of the Harvard College class of 1964. In honor of that class and of Q (see the preceding entry), here is a condensed excerpt from a passage of Plato quoted by Q:
In accordance with this prayer, and with the coming of summer to Australia, that land beloved of Pan, this site's music now returns to the theme introduced in my note of September 10, 2002, "The Sound of Hanging Rock." Posted 11/21/2002 at 10:23 PM |
Hope of Heaven This title is taken from a John O'Hara novel I like very much. It seems appropriate because today is the birthday of three admirable public figures:
"No one can top Eleanor Powell - not even Fred Astaire." -- A fellow professional. Reportedly, "Astaire himself said she was better than him." That's as good as it gets. Let us hope that Powell, Hawkins, and Q are enjoying a place that Q, quoting Plato's Phaedrus, described as follows: "a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents!" This is a rather different, and more pleasant, approach to the Phaedrus than the one most familiar to later generations -- that of Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. Both approaches, however, display what Pirsig calls "Quality." One of my own generation's closest approaches to Quality is found in the 25th Anniversary Report of the Harvard Class of 1964. Charles Small remarks, "A lot of other stuff has gone down the drain since 1964, of course, besides my giving up being a mathematician and settling into my first retirement. My love-hate relationship with the language has intensified, and my despair with words as instruments of communion is often near total. I read a little, but not systematically. I've always been enthralled by the notion that Time is an illusion, a trick our minds play in an attempt to keep things separate, without any reality of its own. My experience suggests that this is literally true, but not the kind of truth that can be acted upon.... I'm always sad and always happy. As someone says in Diane Keaton's film 'Heaven,' 'It's kind of a lost cause, but it's a great experience.'" I agree. Here are two links to some work of what is apparently this same Charles Small:
Posted 11/21/2002 at 1:11 PM |
Back Again Sorry for the hiatus in weblog entries since November 9. There were two reasons for this...
Posted 11/21/2002 at 11:20 AM |
Birthdate of Hermann Weyl
Result of a Google search. Category: Science > Math > Algebra > Group Theory
Quotation from Weyl's Symmetry: "Symmetry is a vast subject, significant in art and nature. Mathematics lies at its root, and it would be hard to find a better one on which to demonstrate the working of the mathematical intellect." In honor of Princeton University, of Sylvia Nasar (see entries of Nov, 6), of the Presbyterian Church (see entry of Nov. 8), and of Professor Weyl (whose work partly inspired the website Diamond Theory), this site's background music is now Pink Floyd's
Updates of Friday, November 15, 2002: In order to clarify the meaning of "Shine" and "Crazy" in the above, consult the following --
To accompany this detailed exegesis of Pink Floyd, click here for a reading by Marlon Brando. For a related educational experience, see pages 126-127 of The Book of Sequels, by Henry Beard, Christopher Cerf, Sarah Durkee, and Sean Kelly (Random House paperback, 1990). Speaking of sequels, be on the lookout for Annie Dillard's sequel to Teaching a Stone to Talk, titled Teaching a Brick to Sing. Posted 11/9/2002 at 4:44 AM |
Religious Symbolism In memory of Steve McQueen ("The Great Escape" and "The Thomas Crown Affair"... see preceding entry) and of Rudolf Augstein (publisher of Der Spiegel), both of whom died on November 7 (in 1980 and 2002, respectively), in memory of the following residents of The Princeton Cemetery
and of the long and powerful association of Princeton University with the Presbyterian Church, as well as the theological perspective of Carl Jung in Man and His Symbols, I offer the following "windmill," taken from the Presbyterian Creedal Standards website, as a memorial: The background music Les Moulins de Mon Coeur, selected yesterday morning in memory of Steve McQueen, continues to be appropriate. "A is for Anna." Posted 11/8/2002 at 3:33 AM |
16 Years Ago Today: Endgame Metaphor for Morphean morphosis, At the end there is a city Black the knight upon that ocean, In the shadows' see a bishop The knight said "Move, be done. It's over." Dabo claves regni caelorum. By silent shore -- Steven H. Cullinane, November 7, 1986 Accompaniment from Lyrics by Eddy Marnay: Comme une pierre que l'on jette Posted 11/7/2002 at 5:24 AM |
The Times They Are A-Changin' Trivia quiz on tonight's "West Wing" -- What do you feed a stolen goat? Posted 11/6/2002 at 10:00 PM |
Today's birthdays: Mike Nichols and Sally Field.
From A Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar: Prologue
Where the statue stood John Forbes Nash, Jr. -- mathematical genius, inventor of a theory of rational behavior, visionary of the thinking machine -- had been sitting with his visitor, also a mathematician, for nearly half an hour. It was late on a weekday afternoon in the spring of 1959, and, though it was only May, uncomfortably warm. Nash was slumped in an armchair in one corner of the hospital lounge, carelessly dressed in a nylon shirt that hung limply over his unbelted trousers. His powerful frame was slack as a rag doll's, his finely molded features expressionless. He had been staring dully at a spot immediately in front of the left foot of Harvard professor George Mackey, hardly moving except to brush his long dark hair away from his forehead in a fitful, repetitive motion. His visitor sat upright, oppressed by the silence, acutely conscious that the doors to the room were locked. Mackey finally could contain himself no longer. His voice was slightly querulous, but he strained to be gentle. "How could you," began Mackey, "how could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof...how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world? How could you...?" Nash looked up at last and fixed Mackey with an unblinking stare as cool and dispassionate as that of any bird or snake. "Because," Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, as if talking to himself, "the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously." What I take seriously: Introduction to Topology and Modern Analysis, by George F. Simmons, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963 An Introduction to Abstract Harmonic Analysis, by Lynn H. Loomis, Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1953 "Harmonic Analysis as the Exploitation of Symmetry -- A Historical Survey," by George W. Mackey, pp. 543-698, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, July 1980 Walsh Functions and Their Applications, by K. G. Beauchamp, Academic Press, New York, 1975 Walsh Series: An Introduction to Dyadic Harmonic Analysis, by F. Schipp, P. Simon, W. R. Wade, and J. Pal, Adam Hilger Ltd., 1990 The review, by W. R. Wade, of Walsh Series and Transforms (Golubov, Efimov, and Skvortsov, publ. by Kluwer, Netherlands, 1991) in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, April 1992, pp. 348-359 Music courtesy of Franz Schubert. Posted 11/6/2002 at 2:22 PM |
Kylie on Tequila From a web page on Kylie Minogue:
From a web page on Malcolm Lowry's classic novel
you gotta ride it like you find it. Get your ticket at the station of the Rock Island Line. in Rock Island, Illinois Posted 11/5/2002 at 6:29 AM |
Back to You, Kylie From the 440 International Archives: 1988 - And speaking of music trivia (thanks to http://www.rockdate.co.uk Rockdate Diary): "The Loco-Motion", by Kylie Minogue hit #4 on the "Billboard Hot 100" this day, the song became the first to reach the top-5 in the U.S. for three different artists (Little Eva in 1962, Grand Funk in 1974). Click here for a nicely done vibraphone-midi version of "Locomotion." To honor Kylie's unforgettable video of that classic, this site's music is now one of my childhood favorites. Kylie, 1988 Down by the station early in the morning, As Sinatra said, Posted 11/5/2002 at 2:56 AM |
Music to Read By In honor of Roger Cooke's review of Helson's Harmonic Analysis, 2nd Edition, today's site music is "Moonlight in Vermont." Posted 11/3/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Día de los Muertos Today is All Souls' Day, the Day of the Dead in Mexico. This site's music for today, in honor of Rufino Tamayo, is "Luna y Sol." Posted 11/2/2002 at 12:00 AM |
ART WARS: Art Director of "Harvey" Dies at 95 Posted 11/1/2002 at 9:40 AM |
All Saints' Day In memory of Ellis Larkins and other departed souls, this site's music, taken from the website of Wesley Dick, is now the music of All Saints' Day. Posted 11/1/2002 at 12:00 AM |