Log24

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Tuesday October 31, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:00 pm
To Announce a Faith

From 7/07, an art review from The New York Times:

Endgame Art?
It's Borrow, Sample and Multiply
in an Exhibition at Bard College

"The show has an endgame, end-time mood….

I would call all these strategies fear of form…. the dismissal of originality is perhaps the oldest ploy in the postmodern playbook. To call yourself an artist at all is by definition to announce a faith, however unacknowledged, in some form of originality, first for yourself, second, perhaps, for the rest of us.

Fear of form above all means fear of compression– of an artistic focus that condenses experiences, ideas and feelings into something whole, committed and visually comprehensible."

— Roberta Smith

It is doubtful that Smith
 would consider the
following "found" art an
example of originality.

It nevertheless does
"announce a faith."


The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061031-PAlottery2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


"First for yourself"

Today's mid-day
Pennsylvania number:
707

See Log24 on 7/07
and the above review.
 

"Second, perhaps,
for the rest of us"

Today's evening
Pennsylvania number:
384

This number is an
example of what the
reviewer calls "compression"–

"an artistic focus that condenses
 experiences, ideas and feelings
into something
whole, committed
 and visually comprehensible."

"Experiences"

See (for instance)

Joan Didion's writings
(1160 pages, 2.35 pounds)
on "the shifting phantasmagoria
which is our actual experience."

"Ideas"

See Plato.

"Feelings"

See A Wrinkle in Time.

"Whole"

The automorphisms
of the tesseract
form a group
of order 384.

"Committed"

See the discussions of
groups of degree 16 in
R. D. Carmichael's classic
Introduction to the Theory
of Groups of Finite Order
.

"Visually comprehensible"

See "Diamond Theory in 1937,"
an excerpt from which
is shown below.

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/Carmichael440abbrev.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The "faith" announced by
the above lottery numbers
on All Hallows' Eve is
perhaps that of the artist
Madeleine L'Engle:

"There is such a thing
as a tesseract.
"

Tuesday October 31, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am
Trick

Queen of Diamonds

"Card tricks can be used
to liven up many classes
for mathematics students
."

… or Treat?

Queen of Hearts

Related material:
yesterday's entry.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Monday October 30, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:30 am

Religion at Harvard

From The Harvard Crimson,
Monday, October 30, 2006  6:09 AM

“Why is the Task Force on General Education afraid of teaching religion? True, their report did recommend a reason and faith requirement, but the committee has clearly shied away from teaching religious principles and has treated the study of religion itself with contempt….

In the general education report… there is no mention of the fundamental principles of religious thought, even though the general education report stresses that students are affected by religion and should think critically about it.”

Here is one approach
to religious thought–
Scientism— exemplified
by Harvard’s
Emperor of Math.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061029-Yau.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Screenshot of doctoryau.com

Here is a rather different
approach to religious thought–

Yesterday’s numbers
in the Empire State:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061029-NYlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

These suggest the
religious contemplation of
Log24, 6/16–
Hero of His Own Story
and of
Log24, 6/30–
Summers Revels Ended.

For more on Harvard’s
real religion, Scientism,
and the political background
in which it thrives,
click on the picture below.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061029-docyau.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Sunday October 29, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 am
Decrease
 
(Readings for the
Halloween season)


In 1692 on July 31, at the time of the Salem witchcraft trials, Increase Mather reportedly "delivered a sermon… in Boston in which he posed the question… 'O what makes the difference between the devils in hell and the angels of heaven?'"

Increase, the father of Cotton Mather, was president of Harvard from June 27, 1692, to Sept. 6, 1701.  His name is memorialized by Harvard's Mather House.

From Log24 on Jan. 15, 2003:

Locating Hell

"Noi siam venuti al loco ov' i' t'ho detto
            che tu vedrai le genti dolorose
    c'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto
."

Dante, Inferno, Canto 3, 16-18

"We have come to where
              I warned you we would find
Those wretched souls
              who no longer have 
The intellectual benefits of the mind."

Dante, Hell, Canto 3, 16-18

From a Harvard student's weblog:

Heard in Mather  I hope you get gingivitis You want me to get oral cancer?! Goodnight fartface Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Make your own waffles!! Blah blah blah starcraft blah blah starcraft blah starcraft. It's da email da email. And some blue hair! Oohoohoo Izod! 10 gigs! Yeah it smells really bad. Only in the stairs though. Starcraft blah blah Starcraft fartface. Yeah it's hard. You have to get a bunch of battle cruisers. 40 kills! So good! Oh ho ho grunt grunt squeal.  I'm getting sick again. You have a final tomorrow? In What?! Um I don't even know. Next year we're draggin him there and sticking the needle in ourselves. 

" … one more line/ unravelling from the dark design/ spun by God and Cotton Mather"

— Robert Lowell

 

 

To honor Harvard's Oct. 28 founding,
here are yesterday's numbers from
the state of Grace (Kelly, of Philadelphia):

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061028-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material:

Log24 on 1/16,
and Hexagram 41,

The image “http://www.log24.com/images/IChing/hexagram41.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Decrease

The Image

At the foot of the mountain, the lake:
The image of Decrease.
Thus the superior man controls his anger
And restrains his instincts.

This suggests thoughts of
the novel Cold Mountain
 (see yesterday morning)
and the following from
Log24 on St. Luke's Day
this year:

The image �http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050511-Montreat-logo.jpg� cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Lucero as portrayed by Megan Follows
Established in 1916,
Montreat College
is a private, Christian
college located in a
beautiful valley in the
Blue Ridge Mountains
of North Carolina.

From Nell:

The image �http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050511-Nell-valleyview.jpg� cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

"The valley spirit never dies…"

See also St. Luke's Day, 2004,
as well as a journal entry
prompted by both
the ignorant religion
of Harvard's past
and the ignorant scientism
of Harvard's present–
 Hitler's Still Point:
A Hate Speech for Harvard
.

This last may, of course, not
quite fit the description of
the superior man
controlling his anger
so wisely provided by
yesterday's lottery and
Hexagram 41.
Nobody's perfect.

Saturday, October 28, 2006

Saturday October 28, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

The Practical Cogitator

Recommended.

Saturday October 28, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 am
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

Recommended.

Friday, October 27, 2006

Friday October 27, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:31 pm

Shem the Penman

Excerpt from Harvard Magazine:

“The people who intermediate between lunatics and the world used to be called alienists; the go-betweens for mathematicians are called teachers. Many a student may rightly have wondered if the terms shouldn’t be reversed.”

— Review of The Magic of Numbers, a book by Benedict H. Gross, Leverett Professor of Mathematics and Dean of Harvard College

For the full review, see

On Mathematical Imagination–
Harvard Magazine
(January-February 2004):

… part of a New Instauration
that will bring mathematics, at last, …
Wednesday, December 31, 2003,
7:00pm EST •  26.1k •
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/
on-line/010442.html

From today’s Harvard Crimson:

Leverett resident in
critical condition, ‘improving’

Published On Friday,
October 27, 2006  4:35 AM

An undergraduate fell from a ninth-floor window in Leverett House Tower F yesterday morning, suffering serious injuries, according to University officials.

The 25-year-old student, Steven R. Snyder ’04-’08, was in critical condition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as of yesterday….

Rooms in the Leverett Towers typically have one large window that doesn’t open and at least one smaller window that can be cranked open. The smaller windows are each about two feet wide and four feet high….

Snyder– who is from Avon Lake, Ohio– is a mathematics concentrator….

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, in an e-mail sent to undergraduates at about 12:30 p.m. yesterday, said a student “apparently fell from a window,” and an “investigation is underway.”

“A time like this can be very difficult for everyone, especially those who live in Leverett. I would like to remind all students and staff that there are many people on campus who can help you through this difficult time,” Gross added. He directed students to the University’s Mental Health Services and the Bureau of Study Counsel.

Related material:

The Crimson Passion,

the previous entry,
Hall of Shem,

and the link, in the
Ash Wednesday, 2006,
entry, Deaconess,

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060301-Hospital2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

to The House of God,
a novel by
Samuel Shem.

Shem is the pen-name
of Stephen J. Bergman,
Clinical Instructor in Psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Thursday October 26, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
Hardy & Wright 
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061025-Wright.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“When he was taken to church
he amused himself by factorizing
the numbers of the hymns.”

— C. P. Snow, foreword to
A Mathematician’s Apology,
by G. H. Hardy

An application of
lottery hermeneutics:

420 –> 4/20 –>

Hall of Shame,
Easter Sunday,
April 20, 2003;

145 –> 5*29 –> 5/29 –>

The Shining of May 29.

The Rev. Wright may also
be interested in the following

Related material:

“Shem was a sham….”
(FW I.7, 170 and Log24 Oct. 13),
and The Hebrew Word Shem:

“When I teach introductory Hebrew, the first word I typically teach is the common noun SHEM. It’s pronounced exactly like our English word ‘shame,’ means almost exactly the opposite, and seems to me to be a key….” — Glen Penton

This word occurs, notably, in Psalm (or “hymn”) 145.

See http://scripturetext.com/psalms/145-1.htm:

thy name
shem  (shame)
an appellation, as a mark or memorial of individuality; by implication honor, authority, character — + base, (in-)fame(-ous), named(-d), renown, report.

Update of 12:25 PM 10/26
from the online Crimson:


Related material:
The Crimson Passion

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Wednesday October 25, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am

Conceit
at Harvard

conceit (See definition.)
“c.1374, from conceiven (see conceive). An Eng. formation based on deceit and receipt. Sense evolved from ‘something formed in the mind,’ to ‘fanciful or witty notion’ (1513), to ‘vanity’ (1605)….”

Online Eytmology Dictionary

“… there is some virtue in tracking cultural trends in terms of their relation to the classic Trinitarian framework of Christian thought.”

Description of lectures to be given Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week (on Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, respectively, and their relationship to “cultural trends”) at Harvard’s Memorial Church

I prefer more-classic trinitarian frameworks– for example,

 

the classic Pythagorean
trinity of 4, 3, and 5

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061025-Pyth2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

and the structural trinity
underlying
classic quilt patterns:

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/TradBlocks.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Click on pictures for further details.

These mathematical trinities are
conceits in the sense of concepts
or notions; examples of the third
kind of conceit are easily
found, especially at Harvard.

For a possible corrective to
examples of the third kind,
see
To Measure the Changes.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Tuesday October 24, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 pm

Another illustration
of the previous entry's concept of
a "critical mass" of weblog entries,
a concept reflected in
the saying
"You can't win the lottery
    if you don't buy a ticket." 

Mathematics and Narrative:
A Two-Part Invention

Here are today's
numbers from the
Keystone State:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061024-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Here is an interpretation
of those numbers:
8/21 — Mathematics:

The Wikipedia article on
the Geometrization Conjecture
,

revision of 13:22 UTC, 21 August 2006:
 

"The geometrization conjecture, also known as Thurston's geometrization conjecture, concerns the geometric structure of compact 3-manifolds. The geometrization conjecture can be considered an analogue for 3-manifolds of the uniformization theorem for surfaces. It was proposed by William Thurston in the late 1970s. It 'includes' other conjectures, such as the Poincaré conjecture and the Thurston elliptization conjecture."

The second sentence, in bold type, was added on 8/21 by yours truly. No deep learning or original thought was required to make this important improvement in the article; the sentence was simply copied from the then-current version of the article on Grigori Perelman (who has, it seems, proved the geometrization conjecture).

This may serve as an example of the "mathematics" part of the above phrase "Mathematics and Narrative" — a phrase which served, with associated links, as the Log24 entry for 8/21.

7/23 — Narrative:

"Each step in the story is a work of art, and the story as a whole is a sequence of episodes of rare beauty, a drama built out of nothing but numbers and imagination." –Freeman Dyson

This quotation appeared in the Log24 entry for 7/23, "Dance of the Numbers."  What Dyson calls a "story" or "drama" is in fact mathematics. (Dyson calls the "steps" in the story "works of art," so  it is clear that Dyson (a former student of G. H. Hardy) is discussing mathematical steps, not paragraphs in someone's account– perhaps a work of art, perhaps not– of mathematical history.)  I personally regard the rhetorical trick of calling the steps leading to a mathematical result a "story" as contemptible vulgarization, but Dyson, as someone whose work (pdf) led to the particular result he is discussing, is entitled to dramatize it as he pleases.

For related material on mathematics, narrative, and vulgarization, click here.

The art of interpretation (applied above to a lottery) is relevant to narrative and perhaps also, in some sense, to the arts of mathematical research and exposition (if not to mathematics itself).  This art is called hermeneutics.

For more on the subject, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Hans-Georg Gadamer, "the decisive figure in the development of twentieth-century hermeneutics."

See also the work of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski of the Catholic University of America, which includes

"Foreword" in Gian-Carlo Rota,
 Indiscrete Thoughts,
 Boston: Birkhäuser Verlag,
 1996, xiii-xvii, and

"Gadamer's Theory of Hermeneutics" in
 The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer,
 edited by Lewis E. Hahn,
 The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol. 24,
 Chicago: Open Court Publishers,
 1997, 223-34.

Tuesday October 24, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:56 pm

Critical Mass

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061024-Christmas.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
Thanks to University Diaries for
yesterday's entry on Harvard:

"I wonder if there's just been a critical mass of creepy stories about Harvard in the last couple of years… A kind of piling on of nastiness and creepiness…"

See also the previous Log24 entry, on yesterday's Pennsylvania lottery, and this description of an experiment I remember fondly from my youth:

"The floor in a large room was covered with mouse traps that were 'cocked' and on each was placed a ping pong ball. At the key moment an additional ping pong ball was tossed out and triggered a single mouse trap to go off. The net result after the balls started bouncing was a classic chain reaction."

"I thought Christmas
comes but once a year."
James Bond
 

Tuesday October 24, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:02 am

Robbing Peter
to Pay Paul

Serious Numbers:

PA lottery Oct. 23, 2006

"Paul must not have been
talking about time
in a linear way."

— Sermon at Nassau Church,
Princeton, New Jersey,
Christmas Eve, 2004

Related material:

1/19,
 
4/29.

Monday, October 23, 2006

Monday October 23, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am
… Christopher Lloyd’s DeLorean
turns into a pumpkin, and

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061023-Midnight2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Penn & Teller turn into rats

.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Sunday October 22, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:59 pm
Jane Wyatt turns into
a fairy godmother…
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061022-Wyatt.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(See tonight’s online
New York Times
obituaries
)

Sunday October 22, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:45 pm

The Spanish Steps, by Michael Jenner

Sunday October 22, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 pm
Go Tigers!

Brooke Shields

On this date:

“In 1746,
Princeton University
in New Jersey received
its charter.”

Today in History
by The Associated Press

“The charter… authorized
the erection of a college….”

Princeton University

Sunday October 22, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am
Ad
 
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05A/050619-AdReinhardt.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Ad Reinhardt

 

Ad for "The Prestige":

"Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called 'The Pledge.' The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course… it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn.' The magician makes his ordinary 'some thing' do something extraordinary. Now if you're looking for the secret… you won't find it.   That's why there's a third act, called 'The Prestige.' This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before."
 

The Associated Press
Thought for Today,
Oct. 22, 2006:

"You can fool
too many of the people
too much of the time."

— James Thurber,
American humorist
(1894-1961)

 
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061020-Halmos.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For more detail,

click on the above
tombstone.

Sunday October 22, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:45 am

Phyllis Kirk and Keenan Wynn in

“A World of His Own”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061022-Kirk.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Twilight Zone

Season 1, Episode 36
First aired: July 1, 1960

“The best Twilight Zone
twist ending ever?”
Amazon.com
reviewer “Alexiel”

Here are the lottery
numbers in Pennsylvania
(state of Grace)
on Thursday, Oct.  19,
the day that
Phyllis Kirk died:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061019-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“I’ve got a little story*
you oughta know…”
— Sinatra

* 3/23, 37:

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Saturday October 21, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:23 am
Reflections on Symmetry
(continued from July 18, 2004)

An application of the finite geometry underlying the diamond theorem:

Qubits in phase space: Wigner function approach to quantum error correction and the mean king problem,” by Juan Pablo Paz, Augusto Jose Roncaglia, and Marcos Saraceno (arXiv:quant-ph/0410117 v2 4 Nov 2004) (pdf)

Friday, October 20, 2006

Friday October 20, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
High Concept

(Continued from 8/23/05)
“At present, such relationships can
at best be heuristically described
in terms that invoke some notion
of an ‘intelligent user standing
outside the system.'”

Gian-Carlo Rota in
Indiscrete Thoughts, p. 152

Related Material

The Devil’s Bible and
Nothing Nothings (Again).

The Context

One context for the Rota quote
is Paul Halmos’s remark, quoted
  in today’s New York Times,
that mathematics is
“almost like being
in touch with God.”

Another context is
Log24 on Aug. 29, 2005.

Here is the original context:

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/Rota152.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Friday October 20, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 am
“Halmos”
 
For one definition, see
Tombstone (typography)
at Wikipedia.
 
  A halmos, according to
the Wikipedia definition:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061020-Halmos.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Click on the halmos
for further details from
today’s New York Times.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Thursday October 19, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 pm
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061019-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Thursday October 19, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 pm
King of Infinite Space
 
  (continued from Sept. 5):

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061019-Coxeter.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Thanks to Peter Woit’s weblog
for a link to the above illustration.

This picture of
“Coxeter Exhuming Geometry”
suggests the following comparison:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061019-Tombstones.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For the second tombstone,
see this morning’s entry,
Birth, Death, and Symmetry.

Further details on the geometry
underlying the second tombstone:

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/LavesTiling.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The above is from
Variable Resolution 4–k Meshes:
Concepts and Applications
(pdf),
by Luiz Velho and Jonas Gomes.

See also Symmetry Framed
and The Garden of Cyrus.

 “That corpse you planted
          last year in your garden,
  Has it begun to sprout?
          Will it bloom this year? 
  Or has the sudden frost
          disturbed its bed?”

— T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land

Thursday October 19, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 am
For Sir Thomas Browne

(Born Oct. 19, 1605,
  died  Oct. 19, 1682)

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/Weyl-lattice2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Browne is noted for
Hydriotaphia (Urne-Buriall)
and The Garden of Cyrus.

Related material:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060902-StarAndDiamond2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Tombstone
and
Symmetry Framed

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Wednesday October 18, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:11 pm
Flashback
 
Log24, May 11, 2005:

The image �http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050511-Montreat-logo.jpg� cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Lucero as portrayed by Megan Follows
Established in 1916,
Montreat College
is a private, Christian
college located in a
beautiful valley in the
Blue Ridge Mountains
of North Carolina.

From Nell:

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Tuesday October 17, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:00 pm
To Measure
the Changes

(continued
from midnight
)

“To measure the changes
     of time and space
the smartest are nothing.”

— Shing-Tung Yau,
 The Emperor of Math
and Harvard philosopher

Illustrations —

To measure the changes:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061017-Yellowbook3.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The smartest are nothing:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061017-Gump2A.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


Tuesday October 17, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 am
To Measure
the Changes

 
(continued from
“The Legacy Codes,”
Nov. 5-6, 2003)

From this morning’s
New York Times:

The Emperor
of Math

Shing-Tung Yau
Rick Friedman for
The New York Times

The much-honored
mathematician
Shing-Tung Yau

Numbers
from the
Keystone State
on October 16:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061016-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For interpretations
of 621, see 6/21’s
Beijing String and
Go with the Flow.

For an interpretation
of 596, see Wikipedia,
596 (nuclear test):

“596 is the codename of the
People’s Republic of China’s
first nuclear weapons test,
detonated on
October 16, 1964.”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061017-Fireball.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material:

“‘In China he is a movie star,’ said Ronnie Chan, a Hong Kong real estate developer and an old friend….  And last summer Dr. Yau played the part…. He ushered Stephen Hawking into the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square to kick off a meeting of some of the world’s leading physicists on string theory, and beamed as a poem he had written was performed by a music professor on the conference stage. It reads in part:
Beautiful indeed
is the source of truth.
To measure the changes
     of time and space
the smartest are nothing.”

The Emperor of Math

Monday, October 16, 2006

Monday October 16, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

Characters

Two items from a Wikipedia watchlist today:

1. User Loyola added a list of central characters to the article on The Glass Bead Game.

2. A dialogue between the Wikipedia characters Prof02 and Charles Matthews continues.

Item 2 seems almost to echo item 1.

The Bead Game, a classic novel by Hermann Hesse, is, in part, a commentary on German cultural history, and the Prof02-Matthews dialogue concerns the Wikipedia article on Erich Heller, a noted scholar of German cultural history.

Matthews is an expert on the game of Go. The Bead Game article says that

“The Game derives its name from the fact that it was originally played with tokens, perhaps analogous to those of an abacus or the game Go….

Although invented after Hesse’s death, Conway’s Game of Life can be seen as an example of a Go-like glass bead game with surprisingly deep properties; since it can encode Turing machines, it contains in some sense everything.”

For some related thoughts on cellular automata (i.e., Conway’s game) and Go, see The Field of Reason with its links Deep Game, And So To Bed.

For some related thoughts on Turing, see the November 2006 Notices of the American Mathematical Society (special issue on Turing).

For some related religious reflections, see Wolfram’s Theory of Everything and the Gameplayers of Zan, as well as the Log24 entries of last Halloween.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Sunday October 15, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 pm

Cleavage Term

Snow is mainly remembered as the author of The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959).

According to Orrin Judd, we can now see “how profoundly wrong Snow was in everything except for his initial metaphor, of a divide between science and the rest of the culture.”

For more on that metaphor, see the previous entry, “The Line.”

I prefer a lesser-known work of Snow– his long biographical foreword to G. H. Hardy’s A Mathematician’s Apology. The foreword, like the book itself, is an example of what Robert M. Pirsig calls “Quality.”  It begins with these words:

“It was a perfectly ordinary night at Christ’s high table, except that Hardy was dining as a guest.”

Related material:

Wallace Stevens,
“The Sail of Ulysses,”
Canto V

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Saturday October 14, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:00 pm
The Line
 
Continued
from Aug. 15, 2004:

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Part III:

“The wave of crystallization rolled ahead. He was seeing two worlds, simultaneously. On the intellectual side, the square side, he saw now that Quality was a cleavage term. What every intellectual analyst looks for. You take your analytic knife, put the point directly on the term Quality and just tap, not hard, gently, and the whole world splits, cleaves, right in two…

The Line,
by S. H. Cullinane

hip and square, classic and romantic, technological and humanistic…and the split is clean. There’s no mess. No slop. No little items that could be one way or the other. Not just a skilled break but a very lucky break. Sometimes the best analysts, working with the most obvious lines of cleavage, can tap and get nothing but a pile of trash. And yet here was Quality; a tiny, almost unnoticeable fault line; a line of illogic in our concept of the universe; and you tapped it, and the whole universe came apart, so neatly it was almost unbelievable. He wished Kant were alive. Kant would have appreciated it. That master diamond cutter. He would see. Hold Quality undefined. That was the secret.”

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061014-Kant.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

See also the discussion of
subjective and objective
by Robert M. Pirsig in
Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance
,
Part III,
followed by this dialogue:

Are We There Yet?

Chris shouts, “When are we
going to get to the top?”

“Probably quite a way yet,”
I reply.

“Will we see a lot?”

“I think so. Look for blue sky
between the trees. As long as we
can’t see sky we know it’s a way yet.
The light will come through the trees
when we round the top.”

Related material:

The Boys from Uruguay,
Lichtung!,
The Shining of May 29,
A Guiding Philosophy,
Ticket Home.

The philosophy of Heidegger
discussed and illustrated
in the above entries may
be regarded as honoring
today’s 100th anniversary
of the birth of Heidegger’s
girlfriend, Hannah Arendt.

See also

 Hannah and Martin
and
Snowblind.

Saturday October 14, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 am
Miniature
Prize

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061014-Snowglobe.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

On a novel by this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature:

“In Snow, translated by Maureen Freely, the line between playful farce and gruesome tragedy is very fine. For instance, the town’s newspaper publisher, Serdar Bey, prints an article describing Ka’s public performance of his poem ‘Snow.’ When Ka protests that he hasn’t written a poem called ‘Snow’ and is not going to perform it in the theater, Serdar Bey replies: ‘Don’t be so sure. There are those who despise us for writing the news before it happens…. Quite a few things do happen only because we’ve written them up first. This is what modern journalism is all about.’ And sure enough….”

Margaret Atwood in the New York Times Book Review of Aug. 15, 2004

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061014-SnowABC2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material:

Miniature

(Thursday, Oct. 12, 2006)

and a novel by
the author of the
above review,
Margaret Atwood:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/CatsEye3.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Click on pictures for details.

Friday, October 13, 2006

Friday October 13, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

To a
Dark Lady*

“Something inside
is telling me that
I’ve got your secret.
Are you still listening?
Fear is the lock, and laughter
the key to your heart….

… you are what you are.
And you make it hard,
and you make it hard….”

Stephen Stills Songbook

* Suggested by…

  (1) A Harvard Crimson opinion piece
       of Oct. 12, “A Psychosexual Sham
  (2) Remarks on the sin of masturbation
        (Ask Father Hardon)
  (3) Shem was a sham…. (FW I.7, 170).

  See also the Crimson on Jack Nicholson
  and Log24 on a food joke.

  “Ours is a very gutsy religion, Cullinane.”
    — The Source, by James A. Michener
  
   Tell it to James Joyce.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Thursday October 12, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 am
Miniature

This year’s winner of the
Nobel Prize in Literature
has written a novel that
  “uses the art of
miniature illumination,
much as Mann’s
Doctor Faustus
did music, to explore
a nation’s soul”
(John Updike in
The New Yorker).

For the explorer,
here is a
miniature story:

  The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060929-PAlottery.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
This story was published on
September 29, 2006,
the Feast of St. Michael
and All Angels
.

For illumination of the story,
see Log24, Sept. 30, 2006.

The author is unknown.


Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Wednesday October 11, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:07 am
Ticket Home

  

Yesterday’s Pennsylvania
Lottery numbers:

Mid-day 266
Evening 529

Related material:

The 266-Day Method

and

The Shining of May 29

(Wednesday, May 29, 2002)

Commentary on Hexagram 29:
“K’an represents…
the principle of light
inclosed in the dark.”

— Richard Wilhelm,
Translation of the I Ching

“How do we explain
the mathematical
if not by mathematics?”

  — Rhetorical question 
of Martin Heidegger

(Page 273 of Heidegger’s
Basic Writings,
edited by David Farrell Krell,
Harper Collins paperback, 1993)

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Tuesday October 10, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 pm
Mate in
Two Seconds

From Oct. 14 last year:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051014-Tick.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

From Oct. 13 last year
(Yom Kippur):

A Poem for Pinter
Oct. 13, 2005

The Guardian on Harold Pinter, winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature:

"Earlier this year, he announced his decision to retire from playwriting in favour of poetry,"

Michael Muskal in today's Los Angeles Times:

"Pinter, 75, is known for his sparse and thin style as well as his etched characters whose crystal patter cuts through the mood like diamond drill bits."

Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise (See Jan. 25):

"'That old Jew gave me this here.'  Egan looked at the diamond….  'It's worth a whole lot of money– you can tell that just by looking– but it means something, I think.  It's got a meaning, like.'

'Let's see,' Egan said, 'what would it mean?'  He took hold of Pablo's hand cupping the stone and held his own hand under it.  '"The jewel is in the lotus," perhaps that's what it means.  The eternal in the temporal….'"

Notes on Modal Logic:

"Modal logic was originally developed to investigate logic under the modes of necessary and possible truth.  The words 'necessary' and 'possible' are called modal connectives, or modalities.  A modality is a word that when applied to a statement indicates when, where, how, or under what circumstances the statement may be true.  In terms of notation, it is common to use a box [] for the modality 'necessary' and a diamond <> for the modality 'possible.'"

A Poem for Pinter

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051013-Waka.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Commentary:

"Waka" also means Japanese poem or Maori canoe.  (For instance, this Japanese poem and this Maori canoe.)

For a meditation on "bang splat," see Sept. 25-29.

For the meaning of "tick tick," see Emily Dickinson on "degreeless noon."

"Hash," of course, signifies "checkmate."  (See previous three entries.)

For language more suited to
the year's most holy day, see
this year's Yom Kippur entry,
from October 2.

That was also the day of the
Amish school killings in
Pennsylvania and the day that
mathematician Paul Halmos died.

For more on the former, see
Death in Two Seconds.

For more on the latter, see
The Halmos Tombstone.

4x9 black monolith

Tuesday October 10, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
Mate

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix04A/041010-Welles.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Orson Welles

Welles died on
this date in 1985,
the same day as
Yul Brynner.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/051010-Yul2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“The crème de la crème
of the chess world in a
show with everything
 but Yul Brynner”

One Night in Bangkok

New York Lottery,
mid-day on Yom Kippur,
October 2, 2006:

256.

Pennsylvania Lottery,
mid-day on the same day:

723.

For more on 256,
see Symmetries
and 7/23.

It is a very difficult
philosophical question,
 the question of

  what ‘random’ is.”

Herbert Robbins, co-author
   of What is Mathematics?

Monday, October 9, 2006

Monday October 9, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am
ART WARS:
To Apollo

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/grid3x3.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason….”
John Outram, architect

To Apollo (10/09/02)
Art Wars: Apollo and Dionysus
(10/09/02)
Balanchine’s Birthday
(01/09/03)
Art Theory for Yom Kippur
(10/05/03)
A Form
(05/22/04)
Ineluctable
(05/27/04)
A Form, continued
(06/05/04)
Parallelisms
(06/06/04)
Ado
(06/25/04)
Deep Game
(06/26/04)
Gameplayers of Zen
(06/27/04)
And So To Bed
(06/29/04)
Translation Plane for Rosh Hashanah
(09/15/04)
Derrida Dead
(10/09/04)
The Nine
(11/09/04)
From Tate to Plato
(11/19/04)
Art History
(05/11/05)
A Miniature Rosetta Stone
(08/06/05)
High Concept
(8/23/05) 
High Concept, Continued
(8/24/05)
Analogical Train of Thought
(8/25/05)
Today’s Sermon: Magical Thinking
(10/09/05)
Balance
(10/31/05)
Matrix
(11/01/05)
Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate
(11/12/05)
Nine is a Vine
(11/12/05)
Apollo and Christ
(12/02/05)
Hamilton’s Whirligig
(01/05/06)
Cross
(01/06/06)
On Beauty
(01/26/06)
Sunday Morning
(01/29/06)
Centre
(01/29/06)
New Haven
(01/29/06) 
Washington Ballet
(02/05/06)
Catholic Schools Sermon
(02/05/06)
The Logic of Apollo
(02/05/06)
Game Boy
(08/06/06)
Art Wars Continued: The Krauss Cross
(09/13/06)
Art Wars Continued: Pandora’s Box
(09/16/06)
The Pope in Plato’s Cave
(09/16/06)
Today’s Birthdays
(09/26/06)
Symbology 101
(09/26/06)

Sunday, October 8, 2006

Sunday October 8, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 am
Today’s Birthday:
Matt Damon
 
Enlarge this image

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061008-Departed2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“Cubistic”

New York Times review
of Scorsese’s The Departed

Related material:

Log24, May 26, 2006

“The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast.”

— G. K. Chesterton
 

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060526-JackInTheBox.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Natasha Wescoat, 2004

Shakespearean
Fool

Not to mention Euclid and Picasso

(Log24, Oct. 6, 2006) —

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/Pythagoras-I47.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/RobertFooteAnimation.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(Click on pictures for details. Euclid is represented by Alexander Bogomolny, Picasso by Robert Foote.)

See also works by the late Arthur Loeb of Harvard’s Department of Visual and Environmental Studies.

“I don’t want to be a product of my environment.  I want my environment to be a product of me.” — Frank Costello in The Departed

For more on the Harvard environment,
see today’s online Crimson:

The Harvard Crimson,
Online Edition
Sunday,
Oct. 8, 2006

POMP AND
CIRCUS-STANCE


CRIMSON/ MEGHAN T. PURDY

Friday, Oct. 6:

The Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus has come to town, and yesterday the animals were disembarked near MIT and paraded to their temporary home at the Banknorth Garden.

OPINION

At Last, a
Guiding Philosophy

The General Education report is a strong cornerstone, though further scrutiny is required.

After four long years, the Curricular Review has finally found its heart.

The Trouble
With the Germans

The College is a little under-educated these days.

By SAHIL K. MAHTANI
Harvard College– in the best formulation I’ve heard– promulgates a Japanese-style education, where the professoriate pretend to teach, the students pretend to learn, and everyone is happy.

Saturday, October 7, 2006

Saturday October 7, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 am
Today’s birthday:
Yo-Yo Ma
 
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/CelloSuites2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Here is an excerpt from the sarabande
of Bach’s Cello Suite 6 in D Major,
which Ma apparently played at the
77th annual Academy Awards as a
tribute to the departed.

Also departed, perhaps on this date:

Cristobal de Morales,
“generally regarded as the leading
Spanish composer during the
so-called Golden Age of Spain.”

Those who find the Bach
too frivolous may enjoy
an excerpt from Morales’s work
Missa pro Defunctis (1544),
Introitus: “Requiem aeternam.”

Today, incidentally, is the date
of the 1571 Battle of Lepanto.

Friday, October 6, 2006

Friday October 6, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:00 pm
Incipit

For the Amish Schoolchildren

“Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday….”

— Bernard Holland in
   The New York Times
  
Monday, May 20, 1996

From Log24
on Monday, Oct. 2, 2006:

“Logos and logic, crystal hypothesis,
Incipit and a form to speak the word
And every latent double in the word….”

— Wallace Stevens,
   “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction

Pennsylvania lottery,
mid-day on Friday, Oct. 6, 2006:

“331”

Related material: Log24, 3/31, 2006.

Friday October 6, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm
A Visual Proof

The great mathematician
Robert P. Langlands
is 70 today.

In honor of his expository work–
notably, lectures at
The Institute for Advanced Study
on “The Practice of Mathematics
and a very acerbic review (pdf) of
a book called Euclid’s Window
here is a “Behold!” proof of
the Pythagorean theorem:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/Pythagorean_Theorem.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The picture above is adapted from
 a sketch by Eves of a “dynamical”
proof suitable for animation.

The proof has been
 described by Alexander Bogomolny
as “a variation on” Euclid I.47.
Bogomolny says it is a proof
by “shearing and translation.”

It has, in fact, been animated.
The following version is
by Robert Foote:
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/RobertFooteAnimation.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Thursday, October 5, 2006

Thursday October 5, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:11 am
In Touch with God

(Title of an interview with
the late Paul Halmos, mathematician)

Since Halmos died on Yom Kippur, his thoughts on God may be of interest to some.

From a 1990 interview:

“What’s the best part of being a mathematician? I’m not a religious man, but it’s almost like being in touch with God when you’re thinking about mathematics. God is keeping secrets from us, and it’s fun to try to learn some of the secrets.”

I personally prefer Annie Dillard on God:

“… if Holy the Firm is matter at its dullest, Aristotle’s materia prima, absolute zero, and since Holy the Firm is in touch with the Absolute at base, then the circle is unbroken.  And it is…. Holy the Firm is in short the philosopher’s stone.”

Some other versions of
the philosopher’s stone:

The image �http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060101-SixOfOne.jpg� cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

And, more simply,
April 28, 2004:

This last has the virtue of
being connected with Halmos
via his remarks during the
“In Touch with God” interview:

“…at the root of all deep mathematics there is a combinatorial insight… the really original, really deep insights are always combinatorial….”
 
“Combinatorics, the finite case, is where the genuine, deep insight is.”

See also the remark of Halmos that serves as an epigraph to Theme and Variations.

Finally, it should be noted that
the 4×9 black rectangle

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061004-Halmos100x225.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

has also served
at least one interpreter
as a philosopher’s stone,
and is also the original
“Halmos tombstone.”

(See previous entry.)

Wednesday, October 4, 2006

Wednesday October 4, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:15 am
Paul R. Halmos died
on Yom Kippur, 2006

“Prof. Paul Halmos died of pneumonia early in the morning of October 2, 2006. He was 90 years old. He is survived by his wife, Virginia Halmos. An obituary may be found at the website of the Mathematical Association of America….”

Halmos’s home page
at Santa Clara University

For a memorial of sorts, see
Lovely, Dark and Deep

Update of 8 PM Oct. 4 —

From Google Book Search:
 
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061004-Halmos.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

This is the source of the
“Halmos tombstone” symbol,
which has been described in a
different form at Wikipedia:

“The tombstone, or halmos–
symbol ∎ (Unicode U+220E)–
is used in mathematics to denote
the end of a proof.” 

This Unicode character is rendered
as an empty square in Explorer
and as a black square in Firefox.

Related material:

The Unity of Mathematics
and
Monolith

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

Tuesday October 3, 2006

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

“Hard lessons lately.”
 
— Bruce Springsteen

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061003-Lesson.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

A belated meditation for Yom Kippur, which ended at sundown yesterday:

“Whatever the shatterings Hopkins felt threatened his and other sacred selves, perhaps precisely because of that threat, he composed the greatest passage on the God-relation of identity since Galatians 2:20….

The aesthetics of truth form alliances, profoundly elective affinities, that the intellect stripped of feeling inclines to reject…. Intellection must address the matter of its feeling.”

— Philip Rieff,
    Sacred Order/Social Order, Vol. 1:
    My Life among the Deathworks:
    Illustrations of the
    Aesthetics of Authority
,
    University of Virginia Press, 2006.
    256 pages.

Tuesday October 3, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 9:26 am

Serious

"I don't think the 'diamond theorem' is anything serious, so I started with blitzing that."

Charles Matthews at Wikipedia, Oct. 2, 2006

"The 'seriousness' of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its practical consequences, which are usually negligible, but in the significance of the mathematical ideas which it connects. We may say, roughly, that a mathematical idea is 'significant' if it can be connected, in a natural and illuminating way, with a large complex of other mathematical ideas."

— G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

Matthews yesterday deleted references to the diamond theorem and related material in the following Wikipedia articles:

Affine group‎
Reflection group‎
Symmetry in mathematics‎
Incidence structure‎
Invariant (mathematics)‎
Symmetry‎
Finite geometry‎
Group action‎
History of geometry‎

This would appear to be a fairly large complex of mathematical ideas.

See also the following "large complex" cited, following the above words of Hardy, in Diamond Theory:

Affine geometry, affine planes, affine spaces, automorphisms, binary codes, block designs, classical groups, codes, coding theory, collineations, combinatorial, combinatorics, conjugacy classes, the Conwell correspondence, correlations, design theory, duads, duality, error correcting codes, exceptional groups, finite fields, finite geometry, finite groups, finite rings, Galois fields, generalized quadrangles, generators, geometry, GF(2), GF(4), the (24,12) Golay code, group actions, group theory, Hadamard matrices, hypercube, hyperplanes, hyperspace, incidence structures, invariance, Karnaugh maps, Kirkman's schoolgirl problem, Latin squares, Leech lattice, linear groups, linear spaces, linear transformations, Mathieu groups, matrix theory, Meno, Miracle Octad Generator, MOG, multiply transitive groups, octads, the octahedral group, orthogonal arrays, outer automorphisms, parallelisms, partial geometries, permutation groups, PG(3,2), polarities, Polya-Burnside theorem, projective geometry, projective planes, projective spaces, projectivities, Reed-Muller codes, the relativity problem, Singer cycle, skew lines,  sporadic simple groups, Steiner systems, symmetric, symmetry, symplectic, synthemes, synthematic, tesseract, transvections, Walsh functions, Witt designs.

Monday, October 2, 2006

Monday October 2, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 am

From Wallace Stevens
On His Birthday

“Logos and logic, crystal hypothesis,
Incipit and a form to speak the word
And every latent double in the word….”

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction

Sunday, October 1, 2006

Sunday October 1, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 6:00 pm

The Joy of Six

Yom Kippur begins on the East Coast
at about 6:38 PM today.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061001-Langdon2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Recommended holiday reading list
from Robert Langdon, Harvard author
of “the renowned collegiate texbook
Religious Iconology

Elegance

Gerard Manley Hopkins on parallelism

Figures of Speech

Hamlet’s Transformation and the four
Log24 entries that preceded it

Finite Geometry of the Hexahedron
(Alternate title for the Christmas, 2005, entry)

Happy Six

Sunday October 1, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 8:00 am
Tales of Philosophy:

Recipe for Disaster
 
according to Jerome Kagan,
Harvard psychologist emeritus
 

From Log24 —
 

The Line

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/GridCube165C3.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The Cube

From Harvard's
Jerome Kagan —
"'Humans demand that there be a clear right and wrong,' he said. 'You've got to believe that the track you've taken is the right track. You get depressed if you're not certain as to what it is you're supposed to be doing or what's right and wrong in the world.'" "People need to divide the world into good and evil, us and them, Kagan continued. To do otherwise– to entertain the possibility that life is not black and white, but variously shaded in gray– is perhaps more honest, rational and decent. But it's also, psychically, a recipe for disaster."
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061001-epi3-w156.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Black and White:

Log24 in
May 2005

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/061001-Grays.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Shades of Gray:

An affine space
and 
Harvard's
Jerome Kagan

 

The above Kagan quotes are taken
from a New York Times essay by
Judith Warner as transcribed by
Mark Finkelstein on Sept. 29.

See also Log24 on
Sept. 29 and 30.

Related material:

Kagan's book

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/SurpriseUncertainty.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Surprise, Uncertainty,
and Mental Structures

(Harvard U. Press, April 2002)

and Werner Heisenberg–
discoverer of the
uncertainty principle
as Anakin Skywalker
being tempted by
the Dark Side:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050519-Anakin.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

(From Log24, May 2005)
 
George Lucas, who has profited
enormously from public depictions
of the clash between
good and evil, light and dark,
may in private life be inclined
to agree with Hercule Poirot:
 
"It is the brain, the little gray cells
on which one must rely.
One must seek the truth
within– not without."
 
(This is another version of the
"Descartes before dehors" principle–
See "A Table," Sept. 28.)
 

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