Log24

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Darkness at Noon

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

The New York Times, July 17

"'A Disappearing Number'… is lucid, dynamic and continuously engaging."

"'All beautiful theorems require a very high degree of economy, unexpectedness and inevitability,' the string-theory* specialist Aninda tells us after elucidating one of Ramanujan’s formulas. That’s not a bad recipe for beautiful theater either…."

Related material:

Image-- 'Deus ex Machina and the Aesthetics of Proof'

Hardy is also the play's (apparently uncredited) source of "economy."

"… a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability  and economy."

A Mathematician's Apology, §18, by G. H. Hardy, 1940

* For more on string theory and a deus, see Not Even Wrong, July 7, 2010.

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