Style
In memory of Lynn H. Loomis:
The above diagram is from a
(paper) journal note of October 21, 1999.
It pictures the relationship of my own discovery, diamond theory (at center), to the field, harmonic analysis, of Professor Loomis, a writer whose style I have long admired.
A quotation from the 1999 note:
"…it is not impossible to draw a fairly sharp dividing line between our mental disposition in the case of esthetic response and that of the responses of ordinary life. A far more difficult question arises if we try to distinguish it from the responses made by us to certain abstract mental constructions such as those of pure mathematics…. Perhaps the distinction lies in this, that in the case of works of art the whole end and purpose is found in the exact quality of the emotional state, whereas in the case of mathematics the purpose is the constatation of the universal validity of the relations without regard to the quality of the emotion accompanying apprehension. Still, it would be impossible to deny the close similarity of the orientation of faculties and attention in the two cases."
— Roger Fry, Transformations (1926), Doubleday Anchor paperback, 1956, p. 8
In other words, appreciating mathematics is much like appreciating art.
(Digitized diagram courtesy of Violet.)