From the release date of the film of Alan Glynn’s
novel The Dark Fields (now retitled “Limitless“)—
“The time is now.”
Related material—
“Why does the dog wag its tail?
Because the dog is smarter than the tail.
If the tail were smarter, it would wag the dog.”
Above: Amy Adams in “Sunshine Cleaning”
“Now, I’ll open up a line of credit for you.
You’ll be wantin’ a few toys.”
For those who think "right-brain" means something—
Post 2310 in yesterday evening’s Short Story links to two posts
from 2006 inspired by Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy—
|
Thursday, May 25, 2006
|
The first paragraph of
“Zeta Functions of Groups: The Quest for Order
Versus the Flight from Ennui,” by Marcus du Sautoy,
Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford—
“Mathematics is about the search for patterns,
to see order where others see chaos. We are very lucky
to find ourselves studying a subject which is neither so rigid
that the patterns are easy, yet not too complicated
lest our brains fail to master its complexities.
John Cawelti sums up this interplay perfectly in a book*
not about mathematics but about mystery and romance:
‘if we seek order and security, the result is likely to be
boredom and sameness. But rejecting order for the sake
of change and novelty brings danger and uncertainty…
the history of culture can be interpreted as a dynamic
tension between these two basic impulses…
between the quest for order and the flight from ennui.”’
* John G. Cawelti, Adventure, Mystery, and Romance:
Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture ,
University of Chicago Press, 1976.
[Cawelti cites as his souce on interpreting “the history
of culture” Harry Berger, Jr., “Naive Consciousness and
Culture Change: An Essay in Historical Structuralism,”
Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association ,
Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring 1973): page 35.]
Here du Sautoy paints mathematicians as seekers of order,
apparently not realizing that the author he approvingly quotes
states that seekers of order face the danger of boredom.
Another danger to seekers
of order is, of course, seeing
order where there is none.
New York Lottery on Cyber Monday,
November 28, 2011—
| midday: 457 | evening: 510 |
| midday: 3990 | evening: 2310 |
Related material: Hannibal Pictures—
A search in memory of Ken Russell, who died Sunday.
Russell directed, among many other films, "Savage Messiah"—
 |
The new executive editor of The New York Times , Jill Abramson, flatly declared:
“‘In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion.'” —The Daily Beast
Detail —
“Words are events.” — Walter J. Ong, S.J.
"What he ultimately lacks is a convincing narrative.
This also ties Habermas once again to the Occupy movement.
But without a narrative there is no concept of change."
Discuss.
A search on the word "innermost" in a PDF copy of a book
by Suzanne Gieser on Jung and Pauli yields no definite meaning
for the book's title, The Innermost Kernel (Springer, 2005).
The author does, however, devote a section (pp. 36-41) to the
influence of Schopenhauer on Jung and Pauli, and that section at least
suggests that the historical origin of her title is in Schopenhauer's
reformulation of Kant's "Ding an sich."
The Innermost Kernel , p. 37—
"… an expression of an underlying invisible world,
the one that forms the innermost essence of reality,
the thing-in-itself. This is the will, a blind existence
that forms an omnipresent entity beyond time, space
and individuality." *
* Arthur Schopenhauer, "Über die Vierfache Wurzel
des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde" (1813),
Kleinere Schriften, SämtlicheWerke III
(Stuttgart, 1962), 805–806.
* See also Mann on Schopenhauer and an "innermost kernel."
* See previous uses of that book title in this journal.
This year's Black Friday Prize for Literature went to…
The "knight's move" of the title is the supplying of the above link.
For details, click on the link (a search on the link's two words).
* For the meaning of "knight's move," see To Make a Short Story Long.
† For the meaning of the phrase (as opposed to the search ),
see the birthplace of Tom Wicker, who died today.
This afternoon's post Window Actions suggests the following.
Synchronistic Reviewing
From a review at bibliphage.blogspot.com on March 24, 2009—
The weblog containing the review is named "Outside of a Dog." Its motto—
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." —Groucho Marx
See also the dog in the update of today's noon entry.
For a synchronistic review, see this weblog on March 24, 2009.
A post by Gowers today on group actions suggests a review.
See Window, Window Continued, and The Galois Window.
"Letzen Endes wird also der Materiebegriff in beiden Fällen auf Mathematik zurückgefürt. Der innerste Kern alles Stofflichen ist für uns wie für Plato eine Form, nicht irgendein materieller Inhalt."
"In the final analysis, in both cases [Plato and modern physics] the notion of matter is essentially a mathematical concept. The most fundamental kernel of all that is material is for us, as well as for Plato, a [mathematical] form, and not some material content."
— W. Heisenberg, "Platons Vorstellungen von den kleinsten Bausteinen der Materie und die Elementarteilchen der modernen Physik," Im Umkreis der Kunst. Eine Festschrift für Emil Preetorius , Wiesbaden 1953, pp. 137-140, as cited by Luc Brisson and F. Walter Meyerstein in Inventing the Universe , SUNY Press, 1995.
See also remarks by Pauli in For All Hallows Day.
Update of 1 PM
Related material —
"Zweiteilung und Symmetrieverminderung, das ist des Pudels Kern. Zweiteilung ist ein sehr altes Attribut des Teufels."
—Pauli to Heisenberg
Here "the poodle's kernel" is a reference to Faust , where the devil appears as a poodle.
On Schopenhauer's later years—
"In Frankfurt he spent the remaining years of his life, living quietly in two rooms with his pipe and his flute but with no friends or companions except a small poodle, the only creature to which Schopenhauer ever seems to have felt any real attachment. He named the dog Atman, a term taken from the pessimistic religion of India, in which Schopenhauer had become more and more interested in his later years."
— Robert F. Davidson, "Pessimism: Arthur Schopenhauer" in Philosophies Men Live By , New York, The Dryden Press, 1952
Thomas Mann on an innermost kernel—
"Denn um zu wiederholen, was ich anfangs sagte:
in dem Geheimnis der Einheit von Ich und Welt,
Sein und Geschehen, in der Durchschauung des
scheinbar Objectiven und Akzidentellen als
Veranstaltung der Seele glaube ich den innersten Kern
der analytischen Lehre zu erkennen." (GW IX 488)
See also previous quotations here of the phrase "innermost kernel."
… And the New York Lottery, with a wry smile,
signs its Thanksgiving story J. D. Salinger .
"I need a photo-opportunity,
I want a shot at redemption.
Don't want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard." — Rhymin' Simon
See also Uncertainty and More Uncertainty.
Grace and Abstraction
Paul Motian, Drummer, Composer and Bandleader, Dies at 80
Tue Nov 22, 2011 20:54 from NYT > Obituaries
Mr. Motian, a drummer, bandleader, and composer of grace and abstraction,
was one of the most influential jazz musicians of the last 50 years.
Today's New York Lottery numbers:
Continuing the Serious Hardy Apology sequence,
here is a reference to volume number 231 in the
Springer Graduate Texts in Mathematics series—
For some less serious work, see posts on 4403 (4/4/03)
as well as posts numbered 550 and 764.
Pebbles found on the cyberspace beach this morning
From Oxford University Press—
From a less scholarly work at Scribd.com —
"The clocks were striking thirteen."
A search for images related to Joseph T. Clark, Society of Jesus,
(author* of a quote in today's noon entry) yields—
"Heaven, I'm in heaven" — First words of "Purple Rose of Cairo"
* Very likely the same Joseph T. Clark, S. J. (1911-1989) who taught at Canisius College.
Joseph T. Clark, S. J., Conventional Logic and Modern Logic:
A Prelude to Transition (Philosophical Studies of the American
Catholic Philosophical Association, III) Woodstock, Maryland:
Woodstock College Press, 1952—
| Alonzo Church, "Logic: formal, symbolic, traditional," Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1942), pp. 170-182. | The contents of this ambitious Dictionary are most uneven. Random reference to its pages is dangerous. But this contribution is among its best. It is condensed. But not dense. A patient and attentive study will pay big dividends in comprehension. Church knows the field and knows how to depict it. A most valuable reference. |
Another book to which random reference is dangerous—
For greater depth, see "Cassirer and Eddington on Structures,
Symmetry and Subjectivity" in Steven French's draft of
"Symmetry, Structure and the Constitution of Objects"
Continued from yesterday's Occupy Space and The Master,
and last night's Midnight in Manhattan—
A chess set previously mentioned in this journal—
These chessmen appeared in the weblog Minimalissimo
on Sept. 20, 2010. In Log24 on that date, the issue was
not so much the chessmen as the underlying board.
See "The Unfolding." See also the following from
the Occupy Space gallery in Limerick today—
| C A V E S – Anthony Murphy Solo Exhibition Opening 7 pm Thursday 1st Dec Exhibition 2nd – 22nd Dec 2011 Plato's allegory of the cave describes prisoners, inhabiting the cave since childhood, immobile, facing an interior wall. A large fire burns behind the prisoners, and as people pass this fire their shadows are cast upon the cave's wall, and these shadows of the activity being played out behind the prisoner become the only version of reality that the prisoner knows. C A V E S is an exhibition of three large scale works, each designed to immerse the viewer, and then to confront the audience with a question regarding how far they, as privileged viewers of the shadows and reflections being played out upon the walls, are willing to allow themselves to believe what they know to be a false reality. The works are based on explorations of simple 2D shapes; regular polygons are exploded to create fractured pattern, or layered upon one another until intricate forms emerge, upon which the projections can begin to draw out a third dimension. |
From Thursday's post All Things Fashion—
From today's online New York Times—
The nuclear symbol beneath the op-ed headline
is the most interesting part of this afternoon's front page—
It is possible to project certain characteristics onto another person who does not possess them at all, but the one being projected upon may unconsciously encourage it.
"It frequently happens that the object offers a hook to the projection, and even lures it out. This is generally the case when the object himself (or herself) is not conscious of the quality in question: in that way it works directly upon the unconscious of the projicient. For all projections provoke counter-projections when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject." ["General Aspects of Dream Psychology," CW 8, par. 519.]
For an object that "offers a hook to the projection," see yesterday's Hypercube Rotations—
Central projection
of the hypercube
See also Stallion Gate in this journal.
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