Log24

<meta name="description"
content="Identidade generativa para o Diamonds Studio 

Desenvolvido em conjunto com

      http://quadradao.com.br/
      http://diamondsstudio.com.br/

Baseado na Diamond Theory by Steven H Cullinane, 1977">

Click on the image for a
relevant Wallace Stevens poem.

A new Facebook page will describe
some background for the above image.

"Sultan" was a pseudonym of Peter Lindbergh, now a 
well-known fashion photographer. Click image for the source.

Related art — Diamond Theory Roullete, by Radames Ajna,
2013 (Processing  code at ReCode Project based on
"Diamond Theory" by Steven H. Cullinane, 1977).

This post's title was suggested by the previous post
and by today's news of a notable sale of a one-copy
record album, "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin."

See as well posts from Tuesday, March 11, 2014,
the day Emma Watson unveiled a new trailer —

Click to enlarge:

For the hypercube as a vector space over the two-element field GF(2),
see a search in this journal for Hypercube + Vector + Space .

For connections with the related symplectic geometry, see Symplectic
in this journal and Notes on Groups and Geometry, 1978-1986.

For the above 1976 hypercube (or tesseract ), see "Diamond Theory,"
by Steven H. Cullinane, Computer Graphics and Art , Vol. 2, No. 1,
Feb. 1977, pp. 5-7.

"Little emblems of eternity"
— Phrase by Oliver Sacks in today's
New York Times  Sunday Review

Some other emblems —

Note the color-interchange
symmetry of each emblem
under 180-degree rotation.

Click an emblem for
some background.

Or: Death Edit

See the above weblog post honoring a Swiss artist‘s
“wit, his perception, his genius, his horizon,
his determination, his humour, his friendship,
and his immeasurable kindness.”

Not a bad sendoff. Contrast with events at Harvard
on the date of the artist’s death.

Related material:  An album cover, and …

See also this  journal in September 2008.

As far as Swiss art goes, I personally prefer the work of, say,
Karl Gerstner and Paul Talman.

 Raven’s Progressive Matrices  intelligence test—

Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale  test—  

Related art —  (Click images for further details.)

Patterns suggesting those of the Raven test:

Patterns suggesting those of the Wechsler test:

The latter patterns were derived from the former.

Yesterday’s online New York Times  has the following quote:

“The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”
— Sol LeWitt

For instance, some conceptual art not  by LeWitt:

Diamond Theory Roulette (Feb. 2, 2014).

“For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross.” — Gravity’s Rainbow

“I don’t write exclusively on Jewish themes or about Jewish characters.
My collection of short stories, Strange Attractors , contained nine pieces,
five of which were, to some degree, Jewish, and this ratio has provided me
with a precise mathematical answer (for me, still the best kind of answer)
to the question of whether I am a Jewish writer. I am five-ninths a Jewish writer.”

— Rebecca Goldstein, “Against Logic”

Midrashim for Rebecca: 

The Diamond Theory vs.  the Story Theory (of truth)

Story Theory and the Number of the Beast

The Palm Sunday post “Gray Space”

For those who prefer the diamond theory of truth,
a “precise mathematical” view of a Gray code —

For those who prefer the story theory of truth,
Thursday with the Nashes —

The actors who portrayed Mr. and Mrs. John Nash in
‘A Beautiful Mind’ now portray Mr. and Mrs. Noah…

Related material: 

For code  in a different sense, but related to the first passage above,
see Diamond Theory Roullete, a webpage by Radamés Ajna.

For "the method of the kaleidoscope" mentioned in the second
passage above, see both the Ajna page and a webpage of my own,
Kaleidoscope Puzzle.

See also last night's "Pink Champagne on Ice" post.
The "ice" in that post's title refers to the white lines
forming a tesseract in the book cover's background—
"icy white and crystalline," as Johnny Mercer put it.
(A Tune for Josefine, Nov. 25.)

See also the tag Diamond Theory tesseract in this journal.

From a weblog post on June 11, 2013, by one Pete Trbovich:

It isn't  supposed to be such a theory.
I do not know why Trbovich thinks it is . 

— Steven H. Cullinane

Update of 11 PM June 16:

For one such central theory of everything, see
the I Ching .  Diamond theory is, unlike that
Chinese classic, pure mathematics, but the larger
of the binary-coordinate structures  it is based on
are clearly isomorphic, simply as structures , to
the I Ching 's 64 hexagrams.

Make of this what you will.

The 1976 monograph "Diamond Theory" was an example
of "programmed art" in the sense established by, for
instance, Karl Gerstner. The images were produced 
according to strict rules, and were in this sense 
"programmed," but were drawn by hand.

Now an actual computer program has been written,
based on the Diamond Theory excerpts published
in the Feb. 1977 issue of Computer Graphics and Art
(Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 5-7), that produces copies of some of
these images (and a few malformed images not  in
Diamond Theory).

See Isaac Gierard's program at GitHub—

https://github.com/matthewepler/ReCode_Project/
blob/dda7b23c5ad505340b468d9bd707fd284e6c48bf/
isaac_gierard/StevenHCullinane_DiamondTheory/
StevenHCullinane_DiamondTheory.pde

As the suffix indicates, this program is in the
Processing Development Environment language.

It produces the following sketch:

The rationale for selecting and arranging these particular images is not clear,
and some of the images suffer from defects (exercise: which ones?), but the 
overall effect of the sketch is pleasing.

For some background for the program, see The ReCode Project.

It is good to learn that the Processing language is well-adapted to making the 
images in such sketches. The overall structure of the sketch gives, however,
no clue to the underlying theory  in "Diamond Theory."

For some related remarks, see Theory (Sept. 30, 2012).

* For the title, see Darko Fritz, "Notions of the Program in 1960s Art."

A 1976 monograph:

A 2012 mixtape cover:

A new "Diamond Theory" image found on the Web
today links my work to the "Stoned Ape Theory"
of human evolution due to Terence McKenna. 

This link is via a picture, apparently copied from deviantart.com,
of two apes contemplating some psychedelic mushrooms.
The picture is titled "Stoned Ape Theory." The mushrooms in
the picture are apparently taken from an image at DrugNet.net:
 

Actually, the mathematical work called "diamond theory"
has nothing whatever to do with psychedelic experiences,
although some of the illustrations may appeal to McKenna fans.

Quotes from the Bremen site
http://dada.compart-bremen.de/ —
 

" 'compArt | center of excellence digital art' is a project
at the University of Bremen, Germany. It is dedicated
to research and development in computing, design,
and teaching. It is supported by Rudolf Augstein Stiftung,
the University of Bremen, and Karin und Uwe Hollweg Stiftung."

See also Stiftung in this journal.

From the current Wikipedia article "Symmetry (physics)"—

"In physics, symmetry includes all features of a physical system that exhibit the property of symmetry—that is, under certain transformations, aspects of these systems are 'unchanged', according to a particular observation. A symmetry of a physical system is a physical or mathematical feature of the system (observed or intrinsic) that is 'preserved' under some change.

A family of particular transformations may be continuous  (such as rotation of a circle) or discrete  (e.g., reflection of a bilaterally symmetric figure, or rotation of a regular polygon). Continuous and discrete transformations give rise to corresponding types of symmetries. Continuous symmetries can be described by Lie groups while discrete symmetries are described by finite groups (see Symmetry group)."….

"A discrete symmetry is a symmetry that describes non-continuous changes in a system. For example, a square possesses discrete rotational symmetry, as only rotations by multiples of right angles will preserve the square's original appearance."

Note the confusion here between continuous (or discontinuous) transformations  and "continuous" (or "discontinuous," i.e. "discrete") groups .

This confusion may impede efforts to think clearly about some pure mathematics related to current physics— in particular, about the geometry of spaces made up of individual units ("points") that are not joined together in a continuous manifold.

For an attempt to forestall such confusion, see Noncontinuous Groups.

For related material, see Erlanger and Galois as well as the opening paragraphs of Diamond Theory—

Symmetry is often described as invariance under a group of transformations. An unspoken assumption about symmetry in Euclidean 3-space is that the transformations involved are continuous.

Diamond theory rejects this assumption, and in so doing reveals that Euclidean symmetry may itself  be invariant under rather interesting groups of non-continuous (and a-symmetric) transformations. (These might be called noncontinuous  groups, as opposed to so-called discontinuous  (or discrete ) symmetry groups. See Weyl's Symmetry .)

For example, the affine group A on the 4-space over the 2-element field has a natural noncontinuous and asymmetric but symmetry-preserving action on the elements of a 4×4 array. (Details)

(Version first archived on March 27, 2002)

Update of Sunday, February 19, 2012—

The abuse of language by the anonymous authors
of the above Wikipedia article occurs also in more
reputable sources. For instance—

Some transformations referred to by Brading and Castellani
and their editees as "discrete symmetries" are, in fact, as
linear transformations of continuous spaces, themselves
continuous  transformations.

This unfortunate abuse of language is at least made explicit
in a 2003 text, Mathematical Perspectives on Theoretical
Physics  (Nirmala Prakash, Imperial College Press)—

"… associated[*] with any given symmetry there always exists
a continuous or a discrete group of transformations….
A symmetry whose associated group is continuous (discrete)
is called a continuous  (discrete ) symmetry ." — Pp. 235, 236

[* Associated how?]

James Hillman reportedly died on Thursday, October 27, 2011.

For some commentary, see Wednesday's link to 779—

From math16.com—

The story of the diamond mine continues
(see Coordinated Steps and Organizing the Mine Workers)— 

From The Search for Invariants (June 20, 2011):

The conclusion of Maja Lovrenov's 
"The Role of Invariance in Cassirer’s Interpretation of the Theory of Relativity"—

"… physical theories prove to be theories of invariants
with regard to certain groups of transformations and
it is exactly the invariance that secures the objectivity
of a physical theory."

— SYNTHESIS PHILOSOPHICA 42 (2/2006), pp. 233–241

Related material from Sunday's New York Times  travel section—

"Exhibit A is certainly Ljubljana…."

For the title, see Palm Sunday.

"There is a pleasantly discursive treatment of
Pontius Pilate's unanswered question 'What is truth?'" — H. S. M. Coxeter, 1987

From this date (April 22) last year—

Richard J. Trudeau in The Non-Euclidean Revolution , chapter on "Geometry and the Diamond Theory of Truth"– "… Plato and Kant, and most of the philosophers and scientists in the 2200-year interval between them, did share the following general presumptions: (1) Diamonds– informative, certain truths about the world– exist. (2) The theorems of Euclidean geometry are diamonds. Presumption (1) is what I referred to earlier as the 'Diamond Theory' of truth. It is far, far older than deductive geometry." Trudeau's book was published in 1987. The non-Euclidean* figures above illustrate concepts from a 1976 monograph, also called "Diamond Theory." Although non-Euclidean,* the theorems of the 1976 "Diamond Theory" are also, in Trudeau's terminology, diamonds. * "Non-Euclidean" here means merely "other than  Euclidean." No violation of Euclid's parallel postulate is implied.

Trudeau comes to reject what he calls the "Diamond Theory" of truth. The trouble with his argument is the phrase "about the world."

Geometry, a part of pure mathematics, is not  about the world. See G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology .

Wallace Stevens Concordance—

The cover art of a 1976 monograph, "Diamond Theory," was described in this morning's post.

As Madeleine L'Engle noted in 1976, the cover art resembles the character Proginoskes in her novel A Wind in the Door.

A search today for Proginoskes yields a description by Brendan Kidwell…

A link at Kidwell's site leads to a weblog by Jeff Atwood, a founder of Stack Overflow, a programmers' question-and-answer site.
(Stack Overflow is said to have inspired the similar site for mathematicians, Math Overflow.)

Yesterday Atwood discussed technical writing.

This suggests a look at Robert M. Pirsig on that subject in his 1974 philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

(See also a document on Pirsig's technical-writing background.)

Pirsig describes his novel as "a sort of Chautauqua."

This, together with the Stevens and Proginoskes quotes above, leads back to the Log24 Feb. 1 post The Search.

An image from that post (click to enlarge)—

Here the apparently fragmented nature of the set of
images imagined as rising above the podium of the
Hall of Philosophy at Chautauqua rather naturally
echoes Stevens's "hundreds of eyes" remark.

Or— Childhood's Rear End

This post was suggested by…

1. Today's New York Times—
   "For many artists Electric Lady has become a home away from home…. For Jimmy Page the personal imprimaturs of Hendrix and Mr. Kramer made all the difference when Led Zeppelin mixed parts of 'Houses of the Holy' there in 1972."
2. The album cover pictures for "Houses of the Holy"
3. Boleskine House, home to Aleister Crowley and (occasionally) to Jimmy Page.

Related material:

The Zeppelin album cover, featuring rear views of nude children, was shot at the Giant's Causeway.

From a page at led-zeppelin.org—

See also Richard Rorty on Heidegger—

Safranski, the author of ''Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy,'' never steps back and pronounces judgment on Heidegger, but something can be inferred from the German title of his book: ''Ein Meister aus Deutschland'' (''A Master From Germany''). Heidegger was, undeniably, a master, and was very German indeed. But Safranski's spine-chilling allusion is to Paul Celan's best-known poem, ''Death Fugue.'' In Michael Hamburger's translation, its last lines are:

death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue
he strikes you with leaden bullets his aim is true
a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete
he sets his pack on us he grants us a grave in the air
he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master from Germany

your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith.

No one familiar with Heidegger's work can read Celan's poem without recalling Heidegger's famous dictum: ''Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells.'' Nobody who makes this association can reread the poem without having the images of Hitler and Heidegger — two men who played with serpents and daydreamed — blend into each other. Heidegger's books will be read for centuries to come, but the smell of smoke from the crematories — the ''grave in the air'' — will linger on their pages.

Heidegger is the antithesis of the sort of philosopher (John Stuart Mill, William James, Isaiah Berlin) who assumes that nothing ultimately matters except human happiness. For him, human suffering is irrelevant: philosophy is far above such banalities. He saw the history of the West not in terms of increasing freedom or of decreasing misery, but as a poem. ''Being's poem,'' he once wrote, ''just begun, is man.''

For Heidegger, history is a sequence of ''words of Being'' — the words of the great philosophers who gave successive historical epochs their self-image, and thereby built successive ''houses of Being.'' The history of the West, which Heidegger also called the history of Being, is a narrative of the changes in human beings' image of themselves, their sense of what ultimately matters. The philosopher's task, he said, is to ''preserve the force of the most elementary words'' — to prevent the words of the great, houses-of-Being-building thinkers of the past from being banalized.

Related musical meditations—

Shine On (Saturday, April 21, 2007), Shine On, Part II, and Built (Sunday, April 22, 2007).

Related pictorial meditations—

The Giant's Causeway at Peter J. Cameron's weblog

and the cover illustration for Diamond Theory (1976)—

The connection between these two images is the following from Cameron's weblog today—

… as we saw, there are two different Latin squares of order 4;
one, but not the other, can be extended to a complete set
of 3 MOLS [mutually orthogonal Latin squares].

The underlying structures of the square pictures in the Diamond Theory cover are those of the two different Latin squares of order 4 mentioned by Cameron.

Connection with childhood—

The children's book A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L'Engle. See math16.com. L'Engle's fantasies about children differ from those of Arthur C. Clarke and Led Zeppelin.

Hoax and Hype 
Four Years Ago Today—

There is Plato's diamond—

and there is diamond theory—

… but there is no "Plato's Diamond Theory."

See, however, today's noon entry, "Plato's Code."

"You gotta be true to your code…" —Sinatra

Dies Natalis of
Emil Artin

From the September 1953 Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society—

Emil Artin, in a review of Éléments de mathématique, by N. Bourbaki, Book II, Algebra, Chaps. I-VII–

"We all believe that mathematics is an art. The author of a book, the lecturer in a classroom tries to convey the structural beauty of mathematics to his readers, to his listeners. In this attempt he must always fail. Mathematics is logical to be sure; each conclusion is drawn from previously derived statements. Yet the whole of it, the real piece of art, is not linear; worse than that its perception should be instantaneous. We all have experienced on some rare occasions the feeling of elation in realizing that we have enabled our listeners to see at a moment's glance the whole architecture and all its ramifications. How can this be achieved? Clinging stubbornly to the logical sequence inhibits the visualization of the whole, and yet this logical structure must predominate or chaos would result."

Art Versus Chaos

From an exhibit,
"Reimagining Space"

The above tesseract (4-D hypercube)
sculpted in 1967 by Peter Forakis
provides an example of what Artin
called "the visualization of the whole."

For related mathematical details see
Diamond Theory in 1937.

"'The test?' I faltered, staring at the thing.
'Yes, to determine whether you can live
in the fourth dimension or only die in it.'"
— Fritz Leiber, 1959

See also the Log24 entry for
Nov. 26,  2009, the date that
Forakis died.

"There is such a thing
as a tesseract."
— Madeleine L'Engle, 1962