"Wundermärchen – the original German word for fairytale –
literally translates to ‘wonder tale’."
— Abigail Tulenko. a PhD student in philosophy at Harvard University,
at Aeon on Feb. 26, 2024.
Another example of abstract art . . .
"The discovery of the Cullinane Diamond Theorem is a testament
to the power of mathematical abstraction and its ability to reveal
deep connections and symmetries in seemingly simple structures."
Context for the Cullinane diamond theorem in
the Smithsonian’s NASA Astrophysics Data System:
From "The Most Notorious Section Phrases," by Sophie G. Garrett
in The Harvard Crimson on April 5, 2017 —
This passage reminds me of (insert impressive philosophy
that was not in the reading).
This student is just being a show off. We get that they are smart
and well read. Congrats, but please don’t make the rest of the us
look bad in comparison. It should be enough to do the assigned
reading without making connections to Hume’s theory of the self.
Hume on personal identity (the "self") —
|
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death, and could I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect nonentity. I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement. Our eyes cannot turn in their sockets without varying our perceptions. Our thought is still more variable than our sight; and all our other senses and faculties contribute to this change: nor is there any single power of the soul, which remains unalterably the same, perhaps for one moment. The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different, whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place where these scenes are represented, or of the materials of which it is composed. |
Related material —
Imago Dei in this journal.
Backstory —
The previous post
and The Crimson Abyss.
See, too, this evening's A Common Space
and earlier posts on Raiders of the Lost Crucible.
Also not without relevance —
This post is continued from a March 12, 2013, post titled
"Smoke and Mirrors" on art in Tromsø, Norway, and from
a June 22, 2014, post on the nineteenth-century
mathematicians Rosenhain and Göpel.
The latter day was the day of death for
mathematician Loren D. Olson, Harvard '64.
For some background on that June 22 post, see the tag
Rosenhain and Göpel in this journal.
Some background on Olson, who taught at the
University of Tromsø, from the American Mathematical
Society yesterday:
Olson died not long after attending the 50th reunion of the
Harvard Class of 1964.
For another connection between that class (also my own)
and Tromsø, see posts tagged "Elegantly Packaged."
This phrase was taken from today's (print)
New York Times review of a new play titled "Smoke."
The phrase refers here to the following "package" for
some mathematical objects that were named after
Rosenhain and Göpel — a 4×4 array —
For the way these objects were packaged within the array
in 1905 by British mathematician R. W. H. T. Hudson, see
a page at finitegometry.org/sc. For the connection to the art
in Tromsø mentioned above, see the diamond theorem.
Online biography of author Cormac McCarthy—
"… he left America on the liner Sylvania, intending to visit
the home of his Irish ancestors (a King Cormac McCarthy
built Blarney Castle)."
Two Years Ago:
Blarney in The Harvard Crimson—
Melissa C. Wong, illustration for "Atlas to the Text,"
by Nicholas T. Rinehart:
Thirty Years Ago:
Non-Blarney from a rural outpost—
Illustration for the generalized diamond theorem,
by Steven H. Cullinane:
Yesterday's post Permanence dealt with the cube
as a symmetric model of the finite projective plane
PG(2,3), which has 13 points and 13 lines. The points
and lines of the finite geometry occur in the cube as
the 13 axes of symmetry and the 13 planes through
the center perpendicular to those axes. If the three
axes lying in a plane that cuts the cube in a hexagon
are supplemented by the axis perpendicular to that
plane, each plane is associated with four axes and,
dually, each axis is associated with four planes.
My web page on this topic, Cubist Geometries, was
written on February 27, 2010, and first saved to the
Internet Archive on Oct. 4, 2010.
For a more recent treatment of this topic that makes
exactly the same points as the 2010 page, see p. 218
of Configurations from a Graphical Viewpoint , by
Tomaž Pisanski and Brigitte Servatius, published by
Springer on Sept. 23, 2012 (date from both Google
Books and Amazon.com):
For a similar 1998 treatment of the topic, see Burkard Polster's
A Geometrical Picture Book (Springer, 1998), pp. 103-104.
The Pisanski-Servatius book reinforces my argument of Jan. 13, 2013,
that the 13 planes through the cube's center that are perpendicular
to the 13 axes of symmetry of the cube should be called the cube's
symmetry planes , contradicting the usual use of of that term.
That argument concerns the interplay between Euclidean and
Galois geometry. Pisanski and Servatius (and, in 1998, Polster)
emphasize the Euclidean square and cube as guides* to
describing the structure of a Galois space. My Jan. 13 argument
uses Galois structures as a guide to re-describing those of Euclid .
(For a similar strategy at a much more sophisticated level,
see a recent Harvard Math Table.)
Related material: Remarks on configurations in this journal
during the month that saw publication of the Pisanski-Servatius book.
* Earlier guides: the diamond theorem (1978), similar theorems for
2x2x2 (1984) and 4x4x4 cubes (1983), and Visualizing GL(2,p)
(1985). See also Spaces as Hypercubes (2012).
In memory of John Miner —
|
See also |
AMS logo—Note resemblance Click on pictures for details. |
This morning's LA Times —
Related remarks —
"I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly plutonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend!"
"In this talk, we will prove the diamond theorem and explore symmetries…."
– Log24 on the date of John Miner's death
"Animation tends to be a condensed art form, using metamorphosis and metaphor to collide and expand meaning. In this way it resembles poetry."
— Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts,
description of an exhibition–
FRAME BY FRAME: ANIMATED AT HARVARD
January 28–Feb 14, 2010
For example–
Animation — The Animated Diamond Theorem,
now shown frame by frame for selected frames
Poetry–
Part I — "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire…."
Part II — Metaphor on the covers of a Salinger book–
For other thoughts on
metamorphosis and metaphor,
see Endgame.
Time and Chance, continued…
NY Lottery numbers today–
Midday 401, Evening 717
_________________________________________________
From this journal on 4/01, 2009:
The Cruelest Month
"Langdon sensed she was
toying with him…."
___________________________________________
From this journal on 7/17, 2008:
Jung’s four-diamond figure from
Aion — a symbol of the self –
Jung’s Map of the Soul,
by Murray Stein:
“… Jung thinks of the self as undergoing continual transformation during the course of a lifetime…. At the end of his late work Aion, Jung presents a diagram to illustrate the dynamic movements of the self….”
For related dynamic movements,
see the Diamond 16 Puzzle
and the diamond theorem.
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