Log24

From Wallace Stevens: A World of Transforming Shapes, by Alan D. Perlis, Bucknell University Press, 1976, p. 117:

… in 'The Pediment of Appearance,' a slight narrative poem in Transport to Summer …

 A group of young men enter some woods 'Hunting for the great ornament, The pediment of appearance.' Though moving through the natural world, the young men seek the artificial, or pure form, believing that in discovering this pediment, this distillation of the real, they will also discover the 'savage transparence,' the rude source of human life. In Stevens's world, such a search is futile, since it is only through observing nature that one reaches beyond it to pure form. As if to demonstrate the degree to which the young men's search is misaligned, Stevens says of them that 'they go crying/The world is myself, life is myself,' believing that what surrounds them is immaterial. Such a proclamation is a cardinal violation of Stevens's principles of the imagination.

This report presents a detailed exposition of the Cullinane diamond theorem, a result that interweaves combinatorics, finite projective geometry, symmetry, and algebra.
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17. Concluding Remarks 

In summary, the Cullinane diamond theorem is a landmark result that provides a unified explanation for the surprising symmetry properties observed in the four–diamond figure D. When D is subjected to the full action of the permutation group G (of order 322,560), every image obtained—amounting to a total of 840 distinct patterns—exhibits either ordinary or color–interchange symmetry. These images can be uniquely categorized into 35 equivalence classes, each corresponding to a line in the finite projective space PG(3,2). The representation of these classes by three line diagrams whose binary sum is zero not only reinforces the connection with the additive structure of GF2 but also ties the entire construction to the elegant framework of finite projective geometry. Further, by introducing delta transforms on square arrays, the theorem extends into an algebraic domain—revealing that the set of symmetric images forms an ideal in a ring of symmetric patterns, with striking isomorphisms to matrix rings over GF4. This algebraic perspective has fostered connections to Latin square geometry, where the orthogonality of Latin squares is naturally interpreted in terms of skew lines in PG(3,2), and to the combinatorial structures underlying the Miracle Octad Generator and Mathieu groups. Ultimately, the Cullinane diamond theorem stands as a testament to the power of combining combinatorial, geometric, and algebraic methods to reveal and classify deep symmetry properties in discrete structures. Its continued influence across diverse fields—from pure mathematics to applied design and cryptographic systems—underscores both its elegance and its far–reaching impact.

This comprehensive investigation thus not only answers the question “What is the Cullinane diamond theorem?” but also situates it firmly within a larger mathematical landscape that continues to develop and inspire new research.