“fearful symmetry” « Search Results

Thursday, August 29, 2024

Fearful Symmetry

Filed under: General — Tags: Dirac and Geometry, Forms, Geometric Theology, Ricci — m759 @ 6:43 pm

Peter Woit this afternoon on "The Terrifying Power of Mathematics" —

"… the quantum field theory of fields satisfying the Dirac equation.
Here there’s a standard apparatus of how to calculate given in
every quantum field theory textbook. These standard calculations
involving Dirac gamma-matrices fit well with Feynman’s 'physicists
finding they have the correct equations without understanding them
have been so terrified they give up trying to understand them'."

For a definition of these matrices, see . . .

Weisstein, Eric W. "Dirac Matrices."
From MathWorld — A Wolfram Web Resource.
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/DiracMatrices.html —

"The Dirac matrices are a class of 4×4 matrices which arise
in quantum electrodynamics. There are a variety of different
symbols used, and Dirac matrices are also known as
gamma matrices or Dirac gamma matrices."

For related religious remarks, see "Physics for Poets"
( Log24, April 20, 2022 ).

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Saturday, December 25, 2010

Not-So-Fearful Symmetry

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 12:25 am

From a Mennonite homeschooling family —

It's a start. For more advanced remarks from the same date, see Mere Geometry.

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Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Fearful Symmetry

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 4:12 pm

Arthur Koestler by David Levine,
New York Review of Books,
December 17, 1964

A Jesuit at the
Gerard Manley Hopkins Archive:

‘Bisociation’: The Act of Creation

Koestler’s concept of ‘bisociation’… enters into the very ‘act of creation.’ In every such act, writes Koestler, the creator ‘bisociates,’ that is, combines, two ‘matrices’– two diverse patterns of knowing or perceiving– in a new way. As each matrix carries its own images, concepts, values, and ‘codes,’ the creative person brings together– ‘bisociates’– two diverse matrices not normally connected.

— Joseph J. Feeney, S.J.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Brightness at Noon*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Figurate Geometry, Strange Change, Strange Dots — m759 @ 12:00 pm

A recent not-too-bright book from Princeton —

Some older, brighter books from Tony Zee —

Fearful Symmetry (1986) and
Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell (2003).

* Continued.

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Saturday, August 22, 2015

A Tony for Kristen*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:48 pm

From Kulturkampf for Princeton (Jan. 14, 2015) —

A sequel to Princeton Requiem,
Gesamtkunstwerk , and Serial Box —

Fearful Symmetry, Princeton Style:

* Wiig. See Dancer (June 10, 2013). Happy birthday.

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Friday, February 13, 2015

Random Remarks

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:48 am

In memory of reporter Bob Simon —

NY Lottery midday Feb. 12, 2015:

788 2970.

In memory of reporter David Carr —

NY Lottery evening Feb. 12, 2015:

601 1469.

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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Kulturkampf for Princeton*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Serial Box — m759 @ 2:01 pm

Einstein and Thomas Mann, Princeton, 1938

A sequel to Princeton Requiem,
Gesamtkunstwerk , and Serial Box —

Fearful Symmetry, Princeton Style:

* See as well other instances of Kulturkampf in this journal.

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Friday, November 5, 2010

V Day for Natalie

Filed under: General — Tags: Fawkes — m759 @ 1:00 pm

This morning's post mentioned the new film "Black Swan," starring Natalie Portman, that opens December 3.

Portman also starred in the 2006 film "V for Vendetta," based very loosely on today's date— November 5, Guy Fawkes Day.

Some background on Alan Moore, the creator of the graphic novel underlying that film—

1. The New York Times , March 12, 2006
2. Panelling Parallax: The Fearful Symmetry of William Blake and Alan Moore
3. This journal on March 24, 2009

Also from March 24, 2009— An image for what Thomas Pynchon, in this morning's post, called "the watchful scavengers of Epiphany."

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Sunday, April 4, 2010

URBI ET ORBI

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Eightfold Cube — m759 @ 11:11 am

URBI
(Toronto)–

Click on image for some background.

ORBI
(Globe and Mail)–

See also Baaad Blake and
Fearful Symmetry.

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Monday September 28, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: Modernism — m759 @ 3:00 am

Symmetry
for Germany

See Annals of Aesthetics,
January 13, 2009,
which features the following
example of modernism:

… and for readers of
the Sunday New York Times …

The funereal heart illustrates a review of a book titled Her Fearful Symmetry. The book is set, partly, in London's Highgate Cemetery.

The book's author, Audrey Niffenegger, has stated that her title refers to "the doubling and twinning and opposites" that are "essential to the theme and structure of the book." For examples of doubling, twinning, and opposites that I prefer to Niffenegger's, see this journal's Saturday and Sunday entries.

Fans of the New York Times's cultural coverage may prefer Niffenegger's own art work. They may also enjoy images from the weekend's London Art Book Fair that suggested the rather different sort of book in Saturday's entry.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tuesday March 24, 2009

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

The Child Trap

See E! Online, March 18 — Lindsay Lohan Remembers Parent Trap Mum

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Wednesday March 21, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Memory-History-Geometry — m759 @ 7:29 pm

Art Appreciation

A rectangle in memory of
Harvard mathematician
George Mackey:

The five Log24 entries ending at
7:00 PM on March 14, 2006,
the last day of Mackey's life:

A rectangle in memory of
artist Mark Rothko:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070321-Rothko.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Sotheby's

Rothko Painting
Is Up for Auction

By CAROL VOGEL of
THE NEW YORK TIMES,
March 21, 5:35 PM ET

"David Rockefeller plans to sell
a seminal painting by Mark Rothko
for what Sotheby's hopes will be
more than $40 million. Above,
a detail from the painting."

From the story:

"Mr. Rockefeller has owned the
painting since 1960, when he
bought it for less than $10,000….
He said that in November, during a
periodic appraisal of his art collection,
he noticed to his surprise that of all
his paintings, the Rothko had
appreciated in value the most.
'That got me thinking,' he said."

Art appreciation:

When Crayolas worked, I dreamed an angel,
a bar of light, your messenger,
beckoning from a wallpaper corner,
blushing in the porcelain gas glow.

When Crayolas worked and chariots swung low,
and America was beautiful and time was slow.

Then all that died in life's longer year.
Autumn came, colors turned sere.
Brittle Crayolas crumbled when touched.
The friends of life were cold and hushed.

Still you were there, shining and warm
behind snow clouds, safe from our harm.
The seed I am again burst out,
drank your heat, suckled your light

in another fair spring to live again
on billowing oceans of bottomless green.

— Excerpt from C. K. Latham's
   When Crayolas Worked,
   from Shiva Dancing:
   The Rothko Chapel Songs,
   1972-1997

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Sunday, September 10, 2006

Sunday September 10, 2006

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Chessboard, Hexagram 20, Symmetry Framed — m759 @ 4:00 am

And the
"Meet Max Black"
Award goes to…

"For the Aeron and other designs,
Mr. Stumpf won this year’s
National Design Award
in Product Design,
which is to be presented
posthumously on Oct. 18
by the Cooper-Hewitt
National Design Museum
in Manhattan."

— Today's New York Times

Stumpf died on August 30,
the date of the Log24 entry
"The Seventh Symbol."

Related material:

From
Geometry of the I Ching,
a chessboard:

I Ching chessboard (original 1989 arrangement)

From the
National Design Museum:

From Log24 on the
date of Stumpf's death,

The Seventh Symbol:

Pictorial version of
Hexagram 20,
Contemplation (View)

See also
Fearful Symmetry
and
Symmetry Framed.

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Saturday, April 29, 2006

Saturday April 29, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 pm

In Memoriam

Harvard mathematician
George Mackey

The five Log24 entries ending at
7:00 PM on March 14, 2006,
the last day of Mackey’s life:

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Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Tuesday March 14, 2006

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Fearful Symmetry
and Minkowski Space-Time

(For the tigers of Princeton,
a selection suggested by
the work of Richard Parker
on Lorentzian lattices)

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06/060314-Lorentzian.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

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Friday, September 17, 2004

Friday September 17, 2004

Filed under: General — Tags: Glasperlenspiel, Strange Change — m759 @ 3:57 pm

3:57:09…
Time is a Weapon

In memory of rock star and NRA member Johnny Ramone, who died on Wednesday, Sept. 15:

“You’ve got to ask yourself a question.”
— Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry

“At the end, when the agent pumps Neo full of lead, the agent is using a .357 Magnum. That gun only holds 9 bullets, but the agent shoots 10 shots at Neo. I don’t know where he got that gun.”

— Jesse Baumann,
The Matrix: The Magic Bullet

Manufacturer:
Ta’as Israel Industries,
Ramat Hasharon, Israel

Friday, August 01, 2003:

Fearful Meditation

Ray Price — Time

“The Max D. Barnes-penned title track, with its stark-reality lyrics, is nothing short of haunting: ‘Time is a weapon, it’s cold and it’s cruel; It knows no religion and plays by no rules; Time has no conscience when it’s all said and done; Like a beast in the jungle that devours its young.’ That’s so good, it hurts! Price’s still-amazing vocals are simply the chilling icing on the cake.”

— Lisa Berg, NashvilleCountry.com

O fearful meditation!
Where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel
from time’s chest lie hid?

— Shakespeare, Sonnet 65

Clue: click here. This in turn leads to my March 4 entry Fearful Symmetry, which contains the following:

“Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery….”

— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

“How strange the change from major to minor….”

— Cole Porter, “Every Time We Say Goodbye“

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Friday, August 1, 2003

Friday August 1, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: Beadgame Space, Glasperlenspiel, Strange Change — m759 @ 1:40 pm

Fearful Meditation

Ray Price — Time

— Lisa Berg, NashvilleCountry.com

O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?

— Shakespeare, Sonnet 65

Clue: click here. This in turn leads to my March 4 entry Fearful Symmetry, which contains the following:

— Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

“How strange the change from major to minor….”

— Cole Porter, “Every Time We Say Goodbye“

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Tuesday, May 27, 2003

Tuesday May 27, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: Solomon's Mental Health Month — m759 @ 5:01 am

Mental Health Month, Day 27:

Conspiracy Theory and
Solomon's Seal

In our journey through Mental Health Month, we have now arrived at day 27. This number, the number of lines on a non-singular cubic surface in complex projective 3-space, suggests it may be time to recall the following note (a sort of syllabus for an imaginary course) from August 1997, the month that the Mel Gibson film "Conspiracy Theory" was released.

Conspiracy Theory 101
August 13, 1997

Fiction:

(A)	Masks of the Illuminati, by Robert Anton Wilson, Pocket Books, New York, 1981. Freemasonry meets The Force (starring James Joyce and Albert Einstein).
(B)	The Number of the Beast, by Robert A. Heinlein, Ballantine Books, New York, 1980. "Pantheistic multiple solipsism" and transformation groups in n-dimensional space combine to yield "the ultimate total philosophy." (p. 438).
(C)	The Essential Blake, edited by Stanley Kunitz, MJF Books, New York, 1987. "Fearful symmetry" in context.

Fact:

(1)	The Cosmic Trigger, by Robert Anton Wilson, Falcon Press, Phoenix, 1986 (first published 1977). Page 245 reveals that "the most comprehensive conspiracy theory," that of the physicist Sir Arthur Eddington, is remarkably similar to Heinlein's theory in (B) above.
(2)	The Development of Mathematics, by E. T. Bell, 2nd. ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 1945. See the discussion of "Solomon's seal," a geometric configuration in complex projective 3-space. This is as good a candidate as any for Wilson's "Holy Guardian Angel" in (A) above.
(3)	Finite Projective Spaces of Three Dimensions, by J. W. P. Hirschfeld, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1985. Chapter 20 shows how to represent Solomon's seal in the 63-point 5-dimensional projective space over the 2-element field. (The corresponding 6-dimensional affine space, with 64 points, is reminiscent of Heinlein's 6-dimensional space.)
	See also China's 3,000-year-old "Book of Transformations," the I Ching, for more philosophy and lore of the affine 6-dimensional space over the binary field. © 1997 S. H. Cullinane

For a more up-to-date and detailed look at the mathematics mentioned above, see

Abstract Configurations
in Algebraic Geometry,

by Igor Dolgachev.

"Art isn't easy." — Stephen Sondheim

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Tuesday, March 4, 2003

Tuesday March 4, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: Glasperlenspiel — m759 @ 9:25 pm

Fearful Symmetry

I just Googled this phrase and found the following site, which turns out to be related to my previous entry on the Bead Game and the death of John P. Thompson.

Fearful Symmetry:
The Music Master’s Lecture,

by Daniel d’Quincy.

This in turn links to an excerpt from The Glass Bead Game that includes this passage:

“I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.”

It is very easy to get dangerously confused about holiness, but here are some relevant quotes:

“You will have to allow me to digress a bit in order to bring ourselves to a sufficiently elevated perspective… I warn you, it will require an attitude of playfulness on your part. Our approach will aim more at sincerity than seriousness. The attitude I’m aiming at is best expressed, I suppose, in the playing of a unique game, known by its German name as Das Glasperlenspiel, and which we may translate as the Glass Bead Game.”

— Daniel d’Quincy, Fearful Symmetry

“7:11”

— God himself said this, at least according to the previous entry and to my Jan. 28 entry, State of the Communion.

“Seven is heaven.”

— See my web page Eight is a Gate.

“An excellent example of a ‘universal’ in the sense of Charles Williams, Jung, or Plato is Hexagram 11 in China’s 3,000-year-old classic, the I Ching:

‘Heaven and earth unite:
the image of PEACE.’
(Wilhelm/Baynes translation,
Princeton University Press, 1967)”

— S. H. Cullinane, Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star

Thus we may associate the numbers 7 and 11 with the notions of heaven and peace; for a somewhat darker association of the time 7:11 with Kali as Time the Destroyer, see my last entry and also my previous entries

Fat Man and Dancing Girl (Feb. 18, 2003), and

Time and Eternity (Feb. 1, 2003).

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