On Time
Anthony Hopkins on time: "For me time is God, God is time.... I'm fascinated by the fact that we can't grasp anything about time. The magical, supernatural force that is with us every second is time." --Cinema Blend "For me time is God, God is time. It's an equation, like an Einstein equation." --Washington Square News A Marxist on time: "God demands scrutiny beyond his menacingly comic aspects. Primarily, the [Saramago] Gospel's God is time, and not truth, the other attribute he asserts. Saramago, a Marxist (an eccentric one), and not a Christian, subverts St. Augustine on the theodicy of time. If time is God, then God can be forgiven nothing, and who would desire to forgive him anyway?" --Harold Bloom on José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991). Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998. Related material: Augustine's Theodicy and Joyce's Aesthetics, Today's Sinner (St. Augustine's Day, 2006), Happy Halloween. Posted 10/31/2007 at 8:28 PM |
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Home from Home On Anthony Hopkins's new film: "At one point during 'Slipstream,' Hopkins's character stumbles upon a Dolly Parton impersonator while Parton's wonderful song, 'Coat of Many Colors,' plays on the soundtrack. I told Hopkins that I thought he used the tune-- which is about a multi-hued coat that little Dolly's grandmother made for her out of random pieces of cloth when the future superstar's family was dirt poor-- as a sort of commentary on the patchwork structure of 'Slipstream' itself. Hopkins smiled broadly and his eyes lit up. Yes, he said, that's exactly what he was doing. He said he even tried to get Parton to appear in the movie, but she was booked and couldn't do it." -- Paul Tatara, Oct. 22, 2007 Anthony Hopkins: "Our existence is beyond understanding. Nobody has an answer. I sense that life is such a mystery. To me, God is time." Related material: "Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to recall exactly the same past from one day to the next? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, then you've had hints of the Change War... It's been going on for a billion years and it will last another billion or so. Up and down the timeline, the two sides-- 'Spiders' and 'Snakes'-- battle endlessly to change the future and the past. Our lives, our memories, are their battleground. And in the midst of the war is the Place, outside space and time, where Greta Forzane and the other Entertainers provide solace and r-&-r for tired time warriors." -- Publisher's description of Fritz Leiber's Big Time. Dialogue from "Slipstream" -- "My God, this place must be a million years old!" "Dolly's Little Diner-- Home from Home" Meanwhile... Country Star Porter Wagoner, 80, Dies Wallace Stevens, "Country Words"-- "What is it that my feeling seeks? I know from all the things it touched And left beside and left behind. It wants the diamond pivot bright." Posted 10/29/2007 at 7:20 AM |
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Slip-Slidin' Away "Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly" -- Four Quartets Anthony Hopkins in the new film "Slipstream" Anthony Hopkins in the film "Proof"-- "Goddamnit, open the goddamn book! Read me the lines!" Related material: Mathematical Narrative (Sept. 27, 2005) Anthony Hopkins Writes Screenplay About God, Life, and Death (Feb. 15, 2006) Posted 10/28/2007 at 7:59 AM |
Something Anonymous "A work of art has an author and yet, when it is perfect, it has something which is essentially anonymous about it." -- Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace Nineteenth-century quilt design: Related material: Posted 10/25/2007 at 9:19 AM |
Descartes's Twelfth Step
An earlier entry today ("Hollywood Midrash continued") on a father and son suggests we might look for an appropriate holy ghost. In that context... Descartes
A search for further background on Emmanuel Levinas, a favorite philosopher of the late R. B. Kitaj (previous two entries), led (somewhat indirectly) to the following figures of Descartes:
This trinity of figures is taken from Descartes' Rule Twelve in Rules for the Direction of the Mind. It seems to be meant to suggest an analogy between superposition of colors and superposition of shapes.
Note that the first figure is made up of vertical lines, the second of vertical and horizontal lines, and the third of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. Leon R. Kass recently suggested that the Descartes figures might be replaced by a more modern concept-- colors as wavelengths. (Commentary, April 2007). This in turn suggests an analogy to Fourier series decomposition of a waveform in harmonic analysis. See the Kass essay for a discussion of the Descartes figures in the context of (pdf) Science, Religion, and the Human Future (not to be confused with Life, the Universe, and Everything). Compare and contrast: The harmonic-analysis analogy suggests a review of an earlier entry's link today to 4/30-- Structure and Logic-- as well as re-examination of Symmetry and a Trinity (Dec. 4, 2002). See also -- A Four-Color Theorem, The Diamond Theorem, and The Most Violent Poem, birthday, 2003. Posted 10/24/2007 at 11:11 PM |
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This morning's online New York Times--
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Adieu:
A Story for Dobbs Internet Movie Database on screenwriter Lem Dobbs: "Trivia:Son of painter R.B. (Ron) Kitaj. Took his pseudonym from the character Humphrey Bogart played in 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.'"
October 21 was the day "We tell ourselves stories in order to live.... We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple
choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the
imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas'
with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which
is our actual experience. Or at least we do for a while. I am talking here about a time when
I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever
told myself, a common condition but one I found troubling." "He has come to be fascinated... by the
kabbalah, finding in it parallels to the world of art and ideas. Every
morning, after a long walk, he winds up at a Westwood café surrounded
by pretty UCLA students where he studies the writings of Emmanuel Levinas,
before working for an hour on his memoirs." Click for source.
-- Orson Scott Card, Posted 10/24/2007 at 9:26 AM |
Halloween Meditations continued from October 31, 2005 From The Gameplayers of Zan:
"The Game in the Ship cannot be approached as a job, a vocation, a
career, or a recreation. To the contrary, it is Life and Death itself
at work there. In the Inner Game, we call the Game Dhum Welur,
the Mind of God. And that Mind is a terrible mind, that one may not
face directly and remain whole. Some of the forerunners guessed it long
ago-- first the Hebrews far back in time, others along the way, and
they wisely left it alone, left the Arcana alone."
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"During the war, she read children's stories on BBC radio. She made movies, too, among them 'Penn of Pennsylvania'...." -- Richard Severo, this afternoon's online New York Times Related material: Penn and Pennsylvania, and Something Wonderful. Posted 10/18/2007 at 3:14 PM |
WELSH (Sean Penn) In this world a man himself is nothing. And there ain't no world but this one. WITT (James Caviezel) You're wrong there, Top. I seen another world. Sometimes I think it was just my imagination. WELSH (smiles) Well, then you've seen things I never will. From Log24, Sept. 13, 2007: The De Niro numbers below may be regarded as naming the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels and the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola. Yesterday's numbers, for the Dalai Lama: Related material: 4/08 and 7/31. Posted 10/18/2007 at 11:07 AM |
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In memory of Harish-Chandra, who died at 60 on this date in 1983 Harish-Chandra in 1981 (Photo by Herman Landshof) Recent Log24 entries have parodied the use of the phrase "deep beauty" as the title of the Oct. 3-4 physics symposium of that name,
which was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and
sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at
Princeton University.
Such parody was in part suggested by the symposium's sources of financial and academic support. This support had, in the view of some, the effect of linking the symposium's topic, the mathematics of quantum theory, with both religion (the Templeton Foundation) and philosophy (a field sometimes associated in popular thought-- though not at Princeton-- with quantum mysticism.) As a corrective to the previous parodies here, the following material on the mathematician Harish-Chandra may help to establish that there is, in fact, such a thing as "deep beauty"-- if not in physics, religion, or philosophy, at least in pure mathematics. MacTutor History of Mathematics: "Harish-Chandra worked at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton from 1963. He was appointed IBM-von Neumann Professor in 1968." R. P. Langlands (pdf, undated, apparently from a 1983 memorial talk): "Almost immediately upon his arrival in Princeton he began working at a ferocious pace, setting standards that the rest of us may emulate but never achieve. For us there is a welter of semi-simple groups: orthogonal groups, symplectic groups, unitary groups, exceptional groups; and in our frailty we are often forced to treat them separately. For him, or so it appeared because his methods were always completely general, there was a single group. This was one of the sources of beauty of the subject in his hands, and I once asked him how he achieved it. He replied, honestly I believe, that he could think no other way. It is certainly true that he was driven back upon the simplifying properties of special examples only in desperate need and always temporarily." "It is difficult to communicate the grandeur of Harish-Chandra's achievements and I have not tried to do so. The theory he created still stands-- if I may be excused a clumsy simile-- like a Gothic cathedral, heavily buttressed below but, in spite of its great weight, light and soaring in its upper reaches, coming as close to heaven as mathematics can. Harish, who was of a spiritual, even religious, cast and who liked to express himself in metaphors, vivid and compelling, did see, I believe, mathematics as mediating between man and what one can only call God. Occasionally, on a stroll after a seminar, usually towards evening, he would express his feelings, his fine hands slightly upraised, his eyes intent on the distant sky; but he saw as his task not to bring men closer to God but God closer to men. For those who can understand his work and who accept that God has a mathematical side, he accomplished it." For deeper views of his work, see
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The Dipolar God
Yesterday's meditation ("Simon's Shema") on the interpenetration of opposites continues: Part I: The Jewel in the Lotus "The fundamental conception of Tantric Buddhist metaphysics, namely, yuganaddha, signifies the coincidence of opposites. It is symbolized by the conjugal embrace (maithuna or kama-kala) of a god and goddess or a Buddha and his consort (signifying karuna and sunyata or upaya and prajna, respectively), also commonly depicted in Tantric Buddhist iconography as the union of vajra (diamond sceptre) and padme (lotus flower). Thus, yuganaddha essentially means the interpenetration of opposites or dipolar fusion, and is a fundamental restatement of Hua-yen theoretic structures." -- p. 148 in "Part II: A Whiteheadian Process Critique of Hua-yen Buddhism," in Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration (SUNY Series in Systematic Philosophy), by Steve Odin, State University of New York Press, 1982 Part II: The Dipolar God And on p. 163 of Odin, op. cit., in "Part III: Theology of the Deep Unconscious: A Reconstruction of Process Theology," in the section titled "Whitehead's Dipolar God as the Collective Unconscious"-- "An effort is made to transpose Whitehead's theory of the dipolar God into the terms of the collective unconscious, so that now the dipolar God is to be comprehended not as a transcendent deity, but the deepest dimension and highest potentiality of one's own psyche." Part III: Piled High and Deep Odin obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook in 1980. (See curriculum vitae (pdf).) For an academic review of Odin's book, see David Applebaum, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 34 (1984), pp. 107-108. It is perhaps worth noting, in light of the final footnote of Mark D. Brimblecombe's Ph.D. thesis "Dipolarity and God" quoted yesterday, that "tantra" is said to mean "loom." For some less-academic background on the Tantric iconography Odin describes, see the webpage "Love and Passion in Tantric Buddhist Art." For a fiction combining love and passion with the word "loom" in a religious context, see Clive Barker's Weaveworld. This fiction-- which is, if not "supreme" in the Wallace Stevens sense, at least entertaining-- may correspond to some aspects of the deep Jungian psychological reality discussed by Odin. Actors portraying Arendt and Heidegger Click on image for details. Posted 10/14/2007 at 11:00 AM |
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Simon's Shema
Related material: Simon's theology here, though radically reductive, is
at least consistent with traditional Jewish thought. It may help
counteract the thoughtless drift to the left of academic writing in
recent decades. Another weapon against leftist nonsense appears,
surprisingly, on the op-ed page of today's New York Times:
"There is a Communist jargon recognizable after a single sentence. Few
people in Europe have not joked in their time about 'concrete steps,'
'contradictions,' 'the interpenetration of opposites,' and the rest."
-- Doris Lessing, winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature The Times offers Lessing's essay to counter Harold Bloom's remark that this year's award of a Nobel Prize to Lessing is "pure political correctness." The following may serve as a further antidote to Bloom. The Communist use of "interpenetration," a term long used to describe the Holy Trinity, suggests-- along with Simon's hymn to the Unity, and the rhetorical advice of Norman Mailer quoted here yesterday-- a search for the full phrase "interpenetration of opposites" in the context* of theology. Such a search yields a rhetorical gem from New Zealand: * See the final footnote on the final page (249) of Brimblecombe's thesis: 3 The Latin word contexo means to interweave, join, or braid together. A check of the Online Eymology Dictionary supports this assertion: See also Wittgenstein on "theology as grammar" and "context-sensitive" grammars as (unlike Simon's reductive process) "noncontracting"-- Log24, April 16, 2007: Happy Birthday, Benedict XVI. Posted 10/13/2007 at 9:22 AM |
From A Harvard Education in a Sentence: "At times, bullshit can only be countered with superior bullshit." -- Norman Mailer, Harvard '43 Illustration from today's Crimson:
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Ceremonies marking the installation of Drew Gilpin Faust as the President of Hogwarts will begin in Hogwarts Yard at 2 PM ET today. Faust has actually been Hogwarts's president since July 1. Last month she welcomed the Class of 2011: Faust "encouraged the incoming class to explore [the school's] many opportunities. 'Think of it as a treasure room of hidden objects Harry discovers at Hogwarts,' Faust said." -- The Hogwarts Crimson, Sept. 10, 2007 From Faust's website today: "As a historian, I am proud to lead an
institution with such a rich and storied past. Hogwarts began in
colonial days with a handful of students, little property and limited
power and prestige, but a determined mission: 'To advance Learning and
perpetuate it to Posterity,' as a 1643 brochure put it. That bold
vision has guided Hogwarts for the past four centuries...." The rest of the story -- "An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College's existence: 'To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches.'" Posted 10/12/2007 at 12:00 AM |
Words and Music suggested by the recent Princeton symposium "Deep Beauty" 1. From my childhood: "You remind me of a man." "What man?" "The man with the power." "What power?" "The power of hoodoo." "Hoodoo?" "You do." "Do what? "Remind me of a man...." -- Dialogue from "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (1947) 2. From later years: "When I was a little boy, (when I was just a boy) and the Devil would call my name (when I was just a boy) I'd say 'now who do, who do you think you're fooling?'" -- Paul Simon, 1973 "At times, bullshit can only be countered with superior bullshit." -- Norman Mailer (See A Harvard Education in a Sentence.) From Plato's Cave: A description of caveman life translated from German --
Picture of von Neumann courtesy of
More from Rhymin' Simon-- she loves me, she get down on her knees and hug me like she loves me like a rock. She rocks me like the rock of ages" Related material: The previous Log24 entries of Oct. 7-11, 2007, and the five Log24 entries ending with "Toy Soldiers" (Valentine's Day, 2003). See also "Taking Christ to the Movies," by Anna Megill, Princeton '06. Posted 10/11/2007 at 9:26 PM |
Comments today on Peter Woit's weblog entry "Deep Beauty"-- Posted 10/11/2007 at 5:01 PM |
The Nobel Prize in Literature this year goes to the author of The Golden Notebook and The Cleft. Related material: The Golden Obituary and Cleavage -- Log24, Oct. 9, 2007 -- Background from 1947: Further details: Wheel Quoted by physics writer Heinz Pagels at the end of The Cosmic Code: "For the essence and the end Of his labor is beauty... one beauty, the rhythm of that Wheel...." -- Robinson Jeffers From Holy Saturday, 2004:
For further details of the wheel metaphor, see Rock of Ages (St. Cecilia's Day, 2006). Posted 10/11/2007 at 12:00 PM |
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"William T. Golden, an investment banker, a philanthropist and a main architect of American science policy in the 20th century who had the idea for a presidential science adviser, died on Sunday [Oct. 7, 2007] in Manhattan. He was 97.... His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital, was announced by the American Museum of Natural History, where he was chairman for five years and most recently chairman emeritus. Mr. Golden had helped found the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. For more than 50 years, Mr. Golden was at the nexus of science and society as a man who knew almost everybody in science and government. His willingness to 'buy the first tank of gas,' as he put it, for worthy projects led him to serve as a trustee or officer or board member of nearly 100 organizations, universities and government agencies.... In 1989, when he bought from Harvard the Black Rock Forest in the Hudson Highlands, which was threatened by development, Mr. Golden explored its nearly 4,000 acres by horseback. He later turned over the forest to a consortium to preserve it." -- Dennis Overbye, The New York Times, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2007 Click for details. See also the following art, suggested by the Golden obituary's Mount Sinai, Black Rock, and forest themes, as well as by the "Deep Beauty" entry from the date of Golden's death: Click for details. Posted 10/9/2007 at 4:09 AM |
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Deep Beauty
was the title of a symposium on quantum theory at Princeton last week dedicated to the late John von Neumann. The title was left undefined. In honor of von Neumann, here is some material that may help those searching for the title's meaning: The 45 citations at Arxiv Structure of a paper titled "Quantum Theory From Five Reasonable Axioms." The school of thought represented in these citations has recently become surprisingly popular-- it appears in a TV commercial featuring the phrase "a more intelligent model."
Those who wisely object that popularity should not be a test of beauty may consult a little-known (at least in the West) Sino-Japanese definition of "deep beauty." This definition-- although from philosophy, not physics-- may appeal to those who, like Peter Woit, are troubled by a Christian foundation's sponsorship of last week's scientific symposium. "Deep beauty" is yuugen. Posted 10/7/2007 at 12:07 PM |
The Sign of the Hat Related material: and Log24 entries of Those for whom entertainment, is God, may also consult Posted 10/5/2007 at 9:00 AM |
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Janitor Monitor Will Hunting may be interested in the following vacant editorships at The Open Directory: Graph Theory and Combinatorics. Related material: The Long Hello and On the Holy Trinity -- "Hey, Carrie-Anne, what's your game now....?" Picture sources: azstarnet.com, vibrationdata.com. Personally, I prefer Carol Ann: From Criticism, Fall, 2001, by Carol Ann Johnston--
See also
Art Wars: Geometry as Conceptual Art and Ideas and Art: Notes on Iconology. For more on Augustine and geometry, see Today's Sinner (Aug. 28, 2006). Posted 10/3/2007 at 3:09 PM |
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Bright as Magnesium "Definitive" -- The New York Times, Sept. 30, 2007, on Blade Runner: The Final Cut Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.-- "The art historian Kirk Varnedoe died on August 14, 2003, after a long and valiant battle with cancer. He was 57. He was a faculty member in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Historical Studies, where he was the fourth art historian to hold this prestigious position, first held by the German Renaissance scholar Erwin Panofsky in the 1930s." Hal Crowther-- "His final lecture was an eloquent, prophetic flight of free association.... Varnedoe chose to introduce his final lecture with the less-quoted last words of the android Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner: 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe-- attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, bright as magnesium; I rode on the back decks of a blinker and watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.'" Posted 10/1/2007 at 7:20 AM |
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October 11th, 2007 at 1:38 am
once we reach the point at which the templeton foundation - or any other private sponsor for that matter - is the main source of funding in a certain area of science it would be time for society to react. react by outdoing the private source and thus claiming the research topic in question firmly back into the public domain.
if society chooses to be oblivious - well - then so be it. research in that area will then not be driven by public interest but by private interest. ultimately it is just a reflection of the value commonly assigned to a specific field.
what i hope this will ultimately achieve is to ring the alarm bell in society that no private organization should take over research funding and direction.
if this will not happen - well - then we are kind of lost anyways. and funding no matter what agenda behind is still better than no funding, since i firmly believe that ultimately the truth (i.e. true statements about reproducible empirical relations) will ultimately prevail and nothing else.
October 11th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Chris says the truth consists of "true statements about reproducible empirical relations." He should read William Golding's Nobel lecture: "When I consider a universe which the scientist constructs by a set of rules which stipulate that this construct must be repeatable and identical, then I am a pessimist and bow down before the great god Entropy. I am optimistic when I consider the spiritual dimension which the scientist’s discipline forces him to ignore."