See the above title in this journal. See also . . .
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
“A Certain Character of Permanence” — G. H. Hardy
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Monday, February 6, 2023
For February 6
Epigraph to The Dark Interval , by John Dominic Crossan —
“I am the pause between two notes that fall
into a real accordance scarce at all:
for Death’s note tends to dominate—
Both, though, are reconciled in the dark interval,
tremblingly.
And the song remains immaculate.”
—Rilke, The Book of Hours , I
"What we do may be small, but it has
a certain character of permanence."
— G. H. Hardy in A Mathematician's Apology
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Saturday, December 1, 2018
Character
"What we do may be small, but it has
a certain character of permanence."
— G. H. Hardy,
A Mathematician's Apology
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Saturday, June 3, 2017
Expanding the Spielraum (Continued*)
Or: The Square
"What we do may be small, but it has
a certain character of permanence."
— G. H. Hardy
* See Expanding the Spielraum in this journal.
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Sunday, January 25, 2015
Death of a Salesman
Yesterday's online LA Times had an obituary for a
traveling salesman:
"Besides writing and teaching, Borg was a frequent speaker,
usually racking up 100,000 frequent flier miles a year.
He and Crossan, along with their wives, led annual tours
to Turkey to follow the path of the Apostle Paul and to give
a sense of his world. They also led tours to Ireland to
showcase a different brand of Christianity."
Borg and Crossan were members of the Jesus Seminar.
For Crossan, see remarks on "The Story Theory of Truth."
See also, from the date of Borg's death, a different salesman joke.
Some backstory —
"What we do may be small, but it has
a certain character of permanence."
— G. H. Hardy in A Mathematician's Apology
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Saturday, June 1, 2013
Permanence
"What we do may be small, but it has
a certain character of permanence."
— G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology
The diamond theorem group, published without acknowledgment
of its source by the Mathematical Association of America in 2011—
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Monday, February 18, 2013
Permanence
Inscribed hexagon (1984)
The well-known fact that a regular hexagon
may be inscribed in a cube was the basis
in 1984 for two ways of coloring the faces
of a cube that serve to illustrate some graphic
aspects of embodied Galois geometry—
Inscribed hexagon (2013)
A redefinition of the term "symmetry plane"
also uses the well-known inscription
of a regular hexagon in the cube—
Related material
"Here is another way to present the deep question 1984 raises…."
— "The Quest for Permanent Novelty," by Michael W. Clune,
The Chronicle of Higher Education , Feb. 11, 2013
“What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence.”
— G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology
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Sunday, June 5, 2011
Edifice Complex
"Total grandeur of a total edifice,
Chosen by an inquisitor of structures
For himself. He stops upon this threshold,
As if the design of all his words takes form
And frame from thinking and is realized."
— Wallace Stevens, "To an Old Philosopher in Rome"
The following edifice may be lacking in grandeur,
and its properties as a configuration were known long
before I stumbled across a description of it… still…
"What we do may be small, but it has
a certain character of permanence…."
— G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology
The Kummer 166 Configuration
as seen by Kantor in 1969— (pdf, 2.5 MB)
For some background, see Configurations and Squares.
For some quite different geometry of the 4×4 square that is
original with me, see a page with that title. (The geometry's
importance depends in part on its connection with the
Miracle Octad Generator (MOG) of R.T. Curtis. I of course
had nothing to do with the MOG's discovery, but I do claim credit
for discovering some geometric properties of the 4×4 square
that constitutes two-thirds of the MOG as originally defined .)
Related material— The Schwartz Notes of June 1.
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Thursday, July 21, 2005
Thursday July 21, 2005
Permanence
“What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence.”
— G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology
For further details, see
Geometry of the 4×4 Square.
“There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
— Hardy, op. cit.
For further details, see
Four-colour proof claim.
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