On a mathematician who died on All Souls' Day 2012—
"… he enthusiastically shared with us the many stories
of Indian epics like Mahabharata." — Online tribute
This suggests a pictorial review incorporating some
images from past Log24 posts.
Best Exotic Ananga Ranga
Click images for some background.
Judy Davis in the Marabar Caves
The above image is from this journal on Sunday, April 13, 2008.
The preceding cover of a book by Northrop Frye was suggested
by material in this journal from February 2003.
See also Yankee Puzzle and Doodle Dandy.
A Passage to India… With Slides and Chanting
"Why art thou here,
Come from the farthest Steppe of India?"
— Midsummer Night's Dream
"After graduating, Mr. Franken headed for Harvard,
while Mr. Davis chose the University of the Pacific
in Stockton, Calif., because, he said, he had heard
that it had a foreign study program in India, where
he hoped to smoke opium. (They did, and he did.)"
— Obituary of Saturday Night Live writer Tom Davis
by Douglas Martin in this evening's online New York Times
"Frances Alenikoff, a dancer, choreographer and visual artist
whose performances often interwove movement with slides,
film, speaking, tape recordings and chant, died on June 23
in Southampton, N.Y. She was 91."
— Margalit Fox, online NY Times of July 8, 2012
"Is our children learning?"
— George W. Bush, January 11, 2000 (according to TIME)
"… our politics seems so tough right now, and
facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day…."
— Barack Obama, October 16, 2010 (according to whitehouse.gov)
The same Obama quotation appeared in The New York Times.
Related material on facts and science and argument —
"If you’re interested in particle physics and not regularly reading
Tommaso Dorigo’s blog, you should be."
— Peter Woit at Not Even Wrong , March 21, 2009
Click on the above for further details.
See also Plotting Obama's Passage to India (AP)
“Anakin Skywalker, otherwise known
as Darth Vader, is arguably
the central character in
George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’….“
— Amazon.com review
Ken Annakin, classic action
filmmaker, dies at 94 —
“Annakin’s last name
was the source
of the name for
Anakin Skywalker.”
“Contrary to previous reports that George Lucas named the ‘Star Wars’ character Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader) after Annakin, Lucas said via his publicist Thursday that he did not.”
Mike O’Sullivan, Voice of America LA bureau chief, in 2007:
“Annakin inadvertently gave his own name to a film character, although the spelling is slightly different, when the actor Alec Guinness suggested the name to director George Lucas for a character in the Star Wars films.
At a screening of the film, Annakin asked Lucas about it.
‘He was running his picture with Anakin Skywalker in it, and I went over to him and said, “you know, you never got permission for this.” He said, “but I dropped an ‘n’ and therefore I got away with it,”‘ Annakin said.”
This morning’s NY Times
obituaries include…
The British-born Annakin
(best known for war epics),
British cinematographer Jack Cardiff,
and Santha Rama Rau (author
of a 1960 play based on the
novel A Passage to India) —
Passage O soul to India!
Eclaircise the myths Asiatic,
the primitive fables.
Not you alone proud truths of the world,
Nor you alone ye facts of modern science,
But myths and fables of eld,
Asia’s, Africa’s fables,
The far-darting beams of the spirit,
the unloos’d dreams,
The deep diving bibles and legends….
For Cardiff, cinematographer
of “A Matter of Life and Death“
and of “Black Narcissus” —
Happy Birthday
to a Dark Lady
“It is said that the students of medieval Paris came to blows in the streets over the question of universals. The stakes are high, for at issue is our whole conception of our ability to describe the world truly or falsely, and the objectivity of any opinions we frame to ourselves. It is arguable that this is always the deepest, most profound problem of philosophy.”
— Simon Blackburn, Think (Oxford, 1999)
Michael Harris, mathematician at the University of Paris:
“… three ‘parts’ of tragedy identified by Aristotle that transpose to fiction of all types– plot (mythos), character (ethos), and ‘thought’ (dianoia)….”
— paper (pdf) to appear in Mathematics and Narrative, A. Doxiadis and B. Mazur, eds.
Mythos —
A visitor from France this morning viewed the entry of Jan. 23, 2006: “In Defense of Hilbert (On His Birthday).” That entry concerns a remark of Michael Harris.
A check of Harris’s website reveals a new article:
“Do Androids Prove Theorems in Their Sleep?” (slighly longer version of article to appear in Mathematics and Narrative, A. Doxiadis and B. Mazur, eds.) (pdf).
From that article:
“The word ‘key’ functions here to structure the reading of the article, to draw the reader’s attention initially to the element of the proof the author considers most important. Compare E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel:
[plot is] something which is measured not be minutes or hours, but by intensity, so that when we look at our past it does not stretch back evenly but piles up into a few notable pinnacles.”
Ethos —
“Forster took pains to widen and deepen the enigmatic character of his novel, to make it a puzzle insoluble within its own terms, or without. Early drafts of A Passage to India reveal a number of false starts. Forster repeatedly revised drafts of chapters thirteen through sixteen, which comprise the crux of the novel, the visit to the Marabar Caves. When he began writing the novel, his intention was to make the cave scene central and significant, but he did not yet know how:
When I began a A Passage to India, I knew something important happened in the Malabar (sic) Caves, and that it would have a central place in the novel– but I didn’t know what it would be… The Malabar Caves represented an area in which concentration can take place. They were to engender an event like an egg.”
— E. M. Forster: A Passage to India, by Betty Jay
Dianoia —
“Despite the flagrant triviality of the proof… this result is the key point in the paper.”
— Michael Harris, op. cit., quoting a mathematical paper
Online Etymology Dictionary:
flagrant c.1500, “resplendent,” from L. flagrantem (nom. flagrans) “burning,” prp. of flagrare “to burn,” from L. root *flag-, corresponding to PIE *bhleg– (cf. Gk. phlegein “to burn, scorch,” O.E. blæc “black”). Sense of “glaringly offensive” first recorded 1706, probably from common legalese phrase in flagrante delicto “red-handed,” lit. “with the crime still blazing.”
A related use of “resplendent”– applied to a Trinity, not a triviality– appears in the Liturgy of Malabar:
— The Liturgies of SS. Mark, James, Clement, Chrysostom, and Basil, and the Church of Malabar, by the Rev. J.M. Neale and the Rev. R.F. Littledale, reprinted by Gorgias Press, 2002
Judy Davis in the Marabar Caves
In mathematics
(as opposed to narrative),
somewhere between
a flagrant triviality and
a resplendent Trinity we
have what might be called
“a resplendent triviality.”
For further details, see
“A Four-Color Theorem.”
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