The Meaning of 3:16 From The New Yorker, issue dated Feb. 28, 2005: "Time Bandits," by Jim Holt, pages 80-85: "Wittgenstein once averred that 'there can never be surprises in logic.'""Miss Gould," by David Remnick, pages 34-35: "She was a fiend for problems of sequence and logic.... Her effect on a piece of writing could be like that of a master tailor on a suit; what had once seemed slovenly and overwrought was suddenly trig and handsome."Suddenly: See Donald E. Knuth's Diamond Signs, Knuth's 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated, and the entry of 3:16 PM today. Trig and handsome: Remnick on Miss Gould again: "She shaped the language of the magazine, always striving for a kind of Euclidean clarity-- transparent, precise, muscular." Einstein on his "Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point, which-- though by no means evident-- could nevertheless be proved with such certainty that any doubt appeared to be out of the question. This lucidity and certainty made an indescribable impression upon me." "I need a photo opportunity, Posted 2/28/2005 at 7:00 PM |
Posted 2/28/2005 at 3:16 PM |
Terrain On the 77th annual Academy Awards:"... in the Sarabande of Suite 6 Ma's phrasing suggests we are in the same spiritual terrain as Beethoven's late quartets." -- Thomas May Amen. For more on Bach, quartets, and film, see Eight is a Gate and 8/8/04. Posted 2/28/2005 at 1:23 AM |
Necessity Above: Detail from the New York Times obituary page of Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005: "The form, the pattern" -- T. S. Eliot "We symbolize logical necessity with the box -- Keith Allen Korcz "4 x 4 = 16" -- Anonymous "Es muss sein!" -- Beethoven Posted 2/27/2005 at 3:00 PM |
Mr. Holland's Week, The question is widened and elongated in the case of the Juilliard String Quartet." --
Bernard Holland in the New York Times, "Robert Koff, a founding member of the Juilliard String Quartet and a concert violinist who performed on modern and Baroque instruments, died on Tuesday at his home in Lexington, Mass. He was 86.... Mr. Koff, along with the violinist Robert Mann, the violist Raphael Hillyer and the cellist Arthur Winograd, formed the Juilliard String Quartet in 1946...."
--
Allan Kozinn in the New York Times, "One listened, for example, to the dazed, hymnlike beauty of the F Major's Lento assai, and then to the acid that Beethoven sprinkles all around it. It is a wrestling match, awesome but also poignant. Schubert at the end of his life had already passed on to another level of spirit. Beethoven went back and forth between the temporal world and the world beyond right up to his dying day."
-- Bernard Holland in the New York Times, Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness. Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, Not that only, but the co-existence, Or say that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now. Related material: Elegance and the following description of Beethoven's last quartet.
Posted 2/25/2005 at 10:53 AM |
Three Days Religious symbols that might have been appropriate for February 20, 21, and 22: Recall that this is Black History Month, and that the octagon has a special religious significance (here and here). The second and third symbols are derived from the first symbol, which is itself derived from a well-known commandment on the New York Times obituary page: Posted 2/24/2005 at 12:00 PM |
It's Quarter to Three Posted 2/24/2005 at 2:45 AM |
The Past as Prologue:
Grand Rapids Revisited For some background, see the
Log24 entries of Feb. 18-20, 2005, which include the following illustration: John Constantine, -- Douglas A. Sweeney,
Posted 2/22/2005 at 2:20 PM |
A Shot at Redemption
Excerpt from Fritz Leiber's "I need a photo-opportunity, I want a shot at redemption. Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard." Posted 2/22/2005 at 12:48 PM |
Posted 2/21/2005 at 2:45 AM |
Spider
Spider is THE journalist of the future. He smokes, he does drugs, and he kicks ass. The drugs are going to eventually kill him but not before he gets his way. And his way is the demise of the failed American dream. Although full of hate, he cares about his city. All he wants to bring the world is truth. Spider Jerusalem, conscience of the City. Frightening thought, but he's the only one we've got." -- What Gritty No Nonsense Comic Book Character are You? brought to you by Quizilla The following references to the Fritz Leiber story "Damnation Morning" seem relevant: Posted 2/21/2005 at 1:09 AM |
Hunter Thompson commits suicide "Fear and Loathing" author dead at 67 Posted 2/20/2005 at 11:47 PM |
Relativity Blues Today, February 20, is the 19th anniversary of my note The Relativity Problem in Finite Geometry. Here is some related material. In 1931, the Christian writer Charles Williams grappled with the theology of time, space, free will, and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (anticipating by many years the discussion of this topic by physicists beginning in the 1950's). (Some pure mathematics -- untainted by physics or theology -- that is nevertheless related, if only by poetic analogy, to Williams's 1931 novel, Many Dimensions, is discussed in the above-mentioned note and in a generalization, Solomon's Cube.) On the back cover of Williams's 1931 novel, the current publisher, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan, makes the following statement: "Replete with rich religious imagery, Many Dimensions explores the relation between predestination and free will as it depicts different human responses to redemptive transcendence." One possible response to such statements was recently provided in some detail by a Princeton philosophy professor. See On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton University Press, 2005. A more thoughtful response would take into account the following: 1. The arguments presented in favor of philosopher John Calvin, who discussed predestination, in The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought, by Marilynne Robinson 2. The physics underlying Einstein's remarks on free will, God, and dice 3. The physics underlying Rebecca Goldstein's novel Properties of Light and Paul Preuss's novels Secret Passages and Broken Symmetries 4. The physics underlying the recent so-called "free will theorem" of John Conway and Simon Kochen of Princeton University 5. The recent novel Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, which deals not with philosophy, but with lives influenced by philosophy -- indirectly, by the philosophy of the aforementioned John Calvin. From a review of Gilead by Jane Vandenburgh: "In The Death of Adam, Robinson shows Jean Cauvin to be the foremost prophet of humanism whose Protestant teachings against the hierarchies of the Roman church set in motion the intellectual movements that promoted widespread literacy among the middle and lower classes, led to both the American and French revolutions, and not only freed African slaves in the United States but brought about suffrage for women. It's odd then that through our culture's reverse historicism, the term 'Calvinism' has come to mean 'moralistic repression.'"For more on what the Calvinist publishing firm Eerdmans calls "redemptive transcendence," see various July 2003 Log24.net entries. If these entries include a fair amount of what Princeton philosophers call bullshit, let the Princeton philosophers meditate on the summary of Harvard philosophy quoted here on November 5 of last year, as well as the remarks of November 5, 2003, and those of November 5, 2002. From Many Dimensions (Eerdmans paperback, 1963, page 53): "Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be purely logical. Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense, were the rules of its pure logic?"A recent answer: Modal Theology "We symbolize logical necessity with the box and logical possibility with the diamond -- Keith Allen Korcz, (Log24.net, 1/25/05) And what do we symbolize by ? "The possibilia that exist, and out of which the Universe arose, are located in a necessary being...." -- Michael Sudduth, Notes on God, Chance, and Necessity by Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church College, Oxford (the home of Lewis Carroll) Posted 2/20/2005 at 2:20 PM |
Highway From previous Log24.net entries: "There is no highway in the sky." "Don't give up until you Stephen Yablo, draft of "A Paradox of Existence," Nov. 8, 1998, section heading: "III. Quine's way or the highway" From that section: "Burgess & Rosen begin their book A Subject with No Object with a relevant fable: Finally, after years of waiting, it is your turn to put a question to the Oracle of Philosophy...you humbly approach and ask the question that has been consuming you for as long as you can remember: 'Tell me, O Oracle, what there is. What sorts of things exist?' To this the Oracle responds: 'What? You want the whole list? ...I will tell you this: everything there is is concrete; nothing there is is abstract....'Suppose we continue the fable a little. Impressed with what the Oracle has told you, you return to civilization to spread the concrete gospel. Your first stop is at [your school here]...." The Concrete Gospel of Donald E. Knuth: In Hoc Signo (from yesterday), continued -- This holy icon appeared at N37°25.638' W122°09.574' on August 22, 2003, at the Stanford campus. See also Cognitive Blending and the Two Cultures. Posted 2/19/2005 at 4:01 PM |
In Hoc Signo
Sources: Another source... "When there's nothing to believe in Posted 2/18/2005 at 3:33 PM |
Modal Theology "We symbolize logical necessity with the box and logical possibility with the diamond -- Keith Allen Korcz, (Log24.net, 1/25/05) And what do we symbolize by ? On the Lapis Philosophorum, the Philosophers' Stone - "'What is this Stone?' Chloe asked.... and therefore often stands for the prima materia in general." - Aion, by C. G. Jung, 1951 (Princeton paperback, 1979, p. 236) "Its discoverer was of the opinion that and out of which the Universe arose, are located in a necessary being...." -- Michael Sudduth, Notes on God, Chance, and Necessity by Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church College, Oxford (the home of Lewis Carroll) See also The Diamond Archetype. For more on modal theology, see Kurt Gödel's Ontological Argument and The Ontological Argument from Anselm to Gödel. Posted 2/17/2005 at 1:00 PM |
Posted 2/16/2005 at 1:25 AM |
Answer
"Are you now, or have you ever been?" "In the case of the Cartesian question, the answer is affirmative, and metaphysics has produced, in the four hundred years since, nothing much better than this. It is not only interesting but supremely practical. What could be more useful than having the means of convincing oneself that one exists whenever the question should arise?" -- Rebecca Goldstein, Properties of Light "... a nightshirted boy trying desperately to awake from the iridescent
dizziness of dream life. Its ultimate vision was the incandescence of a
book or a box grown completely transparent and hollow. This is, I
believe, it: not the crude anguish of physical death but the
incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass
from one state of being to another."
"Le terme
que l'on traduit par dédicace est en japonais ekô, littéralement 'se tourner vers'. Il est composé de deux idéogrammes, e qui signifie 'tourner le dos, se tourner, revenir en arrière' et kô, 'faire face, s'adresser à'."
Rebecca Goldstein For more on Goldstein, see The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2005, and Eight is a Gate, Dec. 19, 2002. Posted 2/15/2005 at 5:28 PM |
Valentine Posted 2/14/2005 at 3:21 PM |
Eight is a Gate, "The
eighth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is called 'Chet' (rhymes with
'let') and has the (light scraping) sound of 'ch' as in 'Bach.'" Posted 2/13/2005 at 8:00 PM |
Eight is a Gate "The old men know a sort of metaphysical state." -- John O'Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938 But in a larger sense... Mais il y a un autre sens dans la dédicace que je trouve plus profond encore. Il s'agit de se dédier soi-même. Le terme que l'on traduit par dédicace est en japonais ekô, littéralement "se tourner vers". Il est composé de deux idéogrammes, e qui signifie "tourner le dos, se tourner, revenir en arrière" et kô, "faire face, s'adresser à". Dans l'école Tendai, on explique que ce terme possède trois sens: - tourner le dos (e) aux phénomènes et faire face (kô) au principe; On pourrait dire regarder l'essentiel, regarder autrui et regarder le futur. Le terme évoque un retournement. Il s'agit d'aller à rebours de nos fonctionnements habituels, de bouleverser nos attitudes, se détourner de l'égocentrisme pour aller dans le sens de l'ouverture, ne plus se fourvoyer dans l'erreur mais s'ouvrir à la clarté. Ekô a bien dans les textes bouddhistes un double sens, c'est à la fois dédier quelque chose comme la récitation d'un texte mais également se dédier soi-même. Dans cette deuxième attitude, c'est soi-même, tout entier, corps et esprit, qui est l'objet de la dédicace. Plus qu'on donne, on se donne. On trouve les deux sens chez Dôgen qui n'ignore pas le "transfert des mérites" mais qui sait que ekô se confond avec la voie de l'éveil. Il y a par exemple ce passage dans le Shôbôgenzô Zuimonki:
Le français ne peut véritablement rendre la subtilité du choix des mots de Dôgen qui utilise des figures de style typiquement chinoises comme le chiasme, l'opposition et l'appariement. Il emploie des verbes d'état d'une part : se reposer, rester, de l'autre des verbes d'action, abandonner (hôge su, lit. "laisser choir"), se dédier (ekô su, lit. "se tourner vers", qui a presque ici le sens de "se jeter"). Réaliser l'amour, la compassion, la connaissance et la sagesse nécessite une transformation, une conversion, un saut dans l'ailleurs. Ce dynamisme permet de quitter le soi égocentré pour entrer dans la dimension de l'éveil, ce que Dôgen appelle ici le bouddhisme. Ce retournement, ekô,
possède une double dimension, à la fois interne et externe. D'un point
de vue intérieur, nous nous dédions à l'éveil, d'un point de vue
extérieur, nous nous dédions aux autres. Mais l'intérieur et
l'extérieur sont comme les deux faces d'une même feuille de papier. -- La dédicace universelle: une causerie d'Eric Rommeluère Posted 2/13/2005 at 2:00 PM |
Resurrection Blues Posted 2/12/2005 at 1:00 PM |
Memorial Posted 2/12/2005 at 12:00 AM |
Portfolio Analysis Posted 2/11/2005 at 11:07 AM |
The Blues An obituary of jazz artist Jimmy Smith, who died on Mardi Gras, leads, via his album Got My Mojo Workin', to a 1961 album of Oliver Nelson that in turn suggests the following quotation: "After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken with a summons by the same post as the other, and had this for a token that the summons was true, 'That his pitcher was broken at the fountain.' (Eccles. 12:6) When he understood it, he called for his friends, and told them of it. Then said he, I am going to my Father’s; and though with great difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be my rewarder. When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river-side, into which as he went, he said, 'Death, where is thy sting?' And as he went down deeper, he said, 'Grave, where is thy victory?' (1 Cor. 15:55) So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side." -- John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress "And all the trumpets sounded..."
For example:
These clips are from the Amazon.com page for the Oliver Nelson album The Blues and the Abstract Truth. Posted 2/11/2005 at 2:09 AM |
The Crimson Passion (last year's Mardi Gras drama) continues with... The Usual Suspects (See previous entry.) The theme of last year's drama is still valid: "The teenagers aren't all bad. I love 'em if nobody else does. There ain't nothing wrong with young people. Jus' quit lyin' to 'em." -- Jackie "Moms" Mabley Posted 2/8/2005 at 11:32 PM |
New from the
Oscar-winning producer, director, and screenwriter of "A Beautiful Mind" - With apologies to Dan Brown... "The Divine Proportion... is an irrational number and the positive solution of the quadratic equation x2 - x - 1 = 0,
which is (1+Sqrt(5))/2, about 1.618034. The Greek letter 'phi' (see below for the symbol) is sometimes used to represent this number." -- Don Cohen For another approach to the divine proportion, see Best Picture. "The rogue’s yarn that will run through much of the
material is the algebraic symmetry to which the name of Galois is
attached and which I wanted to introduce in as concrete and appealing a
way as possible.... Apart from its intrinsic appeal, that is the reason for treating the construction of the pentagon, and our task today will be to acquire some feel for this construction. It is not easy." -- R. P. Langlands, 1999 lecture (pdf) at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in the spirit of Hermann Weyl Posted 2/8/2005 at 10:00 AM |
The Equation David Thomson on The Last Tycoon in The Guardian on 1/29/05:"There's a passage in the book, early on, where Cecilia's narration says: 'You can take Hollywood for granted like I did, or you can dismiss it with the contempt we reserve for what we don't understand. It can be understood, too, but only dimly and in flashes. Not half a dozen men have ever been able to keep the whole equation of pictures in their heads.'.... That phrase stuck in my head: The Whole Equation was a title, waiting to have its book written. And the book might be all the more intriguing (and difficult to do) because Fitzgerald had never been able to give us the equation itself, a tidy little e=mc2. That equation was as elusive as magic: it was a vision, a power, a passion, a kind of perfection that could change the world." David Thomson's book The Whole Equation was published recently. Posted 2/6/2005 at 3:33 PM |
Fountainhead
Sources: A blog entry on The Fountainhead, a 1949 film featuring archltect Howard Roark and his patroness, Dominique Francon, and a web page on architecture patroness Dominique de Menil, who, with her husband, commissioned a house in Houston in 1948 from architect Philip Johnson. Related material: "Architecture is a dangerous profession,
Posted 2/4/2005 at 7:00 PM |