A Meditation on Harvard, Pi, and Rhetoric
Recall that pi equals 3.14159… "Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." —The King and I
Related material—
"It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks."
Happy birthday from Samuel Beckett to Johnny Cash.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Tuesday November 20, 2007
Death on a Friday
and the
Magic of Numbers
Magic of Numbers
Above: PA Lottery on
Friday, November 16th,
the date of death
for noted leftist attorney
Victor Rabinowitz
“Mr. Rabinowitz was a member
of the Communist Party
from 1942 until the early 1960s,
he wrote in his memoir,
Unrepentant Leftist (1996).
He said the party
seemed the best vehicle
to fight for social justice.”
— The New York Times,
Nov. 20, 2007
Related material:
From the Harvard Crimson on Friday:
“Robert Scanlan, a professor of theater
who knew Beckett personally,
directed the plays….
He said that performing Beckett as part of
the New College Theatre’s inaugural series
represents an auspicious beginning.”
From Log24 on 4/19–
“Drama Workshop“–
a note of gratitude
from the Virginia Tech killer:
“Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ,
to inspire generations of the weak
and the defenseless people.”
“It’s not for me. For my children,
for my brothers and sisters…
I did it for them.”
Party on, Victor.
For further drama, see
Comments Off on Tuesday November 20, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
Friday November 16, 2007
Sacralizing the Place:
Love, Age, and a Face
Love, Age, and a Face
Yesterday evening was, according to today’s Harvard Crimson, “the opening night of three usually neglected works by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. The three plays, originally produced in April 2006 to commemorate what would have been Beckett’s 100th birthday, were part of the inaugural series for the New College Theatre. Robert Scanlan, a professor of theater who knew Beckett personally, directed the plays…. He said that performing Beckett as part of the New College Theatre’s inaugural series represents an auspicious beginning. ‘I personally think it sacralizes the place to perform Beckett here,’ he said.”
“The first play, ‘Words and Music,’ displayed the frustrations of the creative process: a writer, Joe, and Bob, a character personified by [a] musical trio, worked with and against each other to create art.
The duo first tried to capture love through words, but Joe’s attempts quickly descended into clichés.
Then, Joe and Bob tried to capture age, but they failed there too.
Finally, they tried to capture ‘the face’– a vision of a lost love. While they were able to achieve some meaning, this soon came to an abrupt end when the elderly man who’d been leading their creative endeavor simply stood up and walked away.”
Related material:
Log24 on
Holy Thursday 2006:
the alleged centenary
of Beckett’s birth
Pasta Monster Gets
Academic Attention
(Today’s NY Times)
Comments Off on Friday November 16, 2007
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Tuesday June 27, 2006
Chinese Jar
Revisited
Revisited
In memory of
Irving Kaplansky,
who died on
Sunday, June 25, 2006
“Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.”
— T. S. Eliot
Kaplansky received his doctorate in mathematics at Harvard in 1941 as the first Ph.D. student of Saunders Mac Lane.
From the April 25, 2005, Harvard Crimson:
Ex-Math Prof Mac Lane, 95, Dies
Gade University Professor of Mathematics Barry Mazur, a friend of the late Mac Lane, recalled that [a Mac Lane paper of 1945] had at first been rejected from a lower-caliber mathematical journal because the editor thought that it was “more devoid of content” than any other he had read.“Saunders wrote back and said, ‘That’s the point,'” Mazur said. “And in some ways that’s the genius of it. It’s the barest, most Beckett-like vocabulary that incorporates the theory and nothing else.”
He likened it to a sparse grammar of nouns and verbs and a limited vocabulary that is presented “in such a deft way that it will help you understand any language you wish to understand and any language will fit into it.”
A sparse grammar of lines from Charles Sanders Peirce (Harvard College, class of 1859):
It is true of this set of binary connectives, as it is true of logic generally, that (as alleged above of Mac Lane’s category theory) “it will help you understand any language you wish to understand and any language will fit into it.” Of course, a great deal of questionable material has been written about these connectives. (See, for instance, Piaget and De Giacomo.) For remarks on the connectives that are not questionable, see Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (English version, 1922), section 5.101, and Knuth’s “Boolean Basics” (draft, 2006).
Related entry: Binary Geometry.
Comments Off on Tuesday June 27, 2006
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Saturday March 18, 2006
ART WARS:
The Crimson Passion continues…
| How to Grow a Crimson Clover Published in the Harvard Crimson Stephen Dedalus, James Joyce’s literary alter ego, once described the trappings of Irish culture as nets that hold a soul back from flight. By his standards, Harvard has soared. Irish culture has been an indelible part of Boston, but the names on our red-brick buildings tell a different story: Adams, Lowell, Winthrop. It would be easy to assume that for Harvard students, Irish culture consists of little more than guzzling alcohol in Tommy Doyle’s Irish Pub or at St. Patrick’s Day Stein Club. Recently, however, a small but lively Irish subculture, centered on Celtic music and language, has been developing at Harvard. But despite its vivacity, it remains largely unnoticed by the broader student body. Efforts by groups like the Harvard College Celtic Club and by the producers of the upcoming Loeb mainstage of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” may be just the sort of first step needed to finally make Harvard a place where Irish artistic culture lives…. REACHING OUT “The Playboy”– which will run from April 28 through May 6– revolves around the disruption of life in a provincial Irish village when an outsider arrives with an extravagant story. All points converge at this play’s production: members of the Celtic Club coordinated and will perform the play’s music, the producers hope to draw Boston’s Irish community, and the production will present Harvard’s students with a script deeply entrenched in Irish history, but that boasts a universal appeal. As Kelly points out, the Irish roots of “The Playboy” are clearer than in the plays of the nominally Irish, but Francophone, absurdist writer Samuel Beckett. And unlike the plays of Sean O’Casey, which are extremely rooted in Irish culture, “The Playboy” boasts a visceral appeal that will be accessible to Harvard students. |
From a site linked to in yesterday’s St. Patrick’s Day sermon as the keys to the kingdom:
“In the western world, we tend to take for granted our musical scale, formed of whole tone and half tone steps. These steps are arranged in two ways: the major scale and the minor.”
|
From the obituary in today’s online New York Times of fashion designer Oleg Cassini, who died at 92 on St. Patrick’s Day, Friday, March 17, 2006: “… he was always seen in the company of heiresses, debutantes, showgirls, ingenues. Between, before or after [his first] two marriages, he dated young starlets like Betty Grable and Lana Turner and actresses like Ursula Andress and Grace Kelly, to whom he was briefly engaged. ‘He was a true playboy, in the Hollywood sense,’ said Diane von Furstenberg, the fashion designer and a friend of Mr. Cassini’s. ‘Well into his 90’s, he was a flirt.'” |
“How strange the change from major to minor…
Ev’ry time we say goodbye.”
— Cole Porter
Comments Off on Saturday March 18, 2006
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Sunday May 1, 2005
Logos
Harvard's Barry Mazur on
one mathematical style:
"It’s the barest, most Beckett-like vocabulary
that incorporates the theory and nothing else."
Samuel Beckett, Quad (1981):
A Jungian on this six-line logo:
"They are the same six lines
that exist in the I Ching….
Now observe the square more closely:
four of the lines are of equal length,
the other two are longer….
For this reason symmetry
cannot be statically produced
and a dance results."
— Marie-Louise von Franz,
Number and Time (1970),
Northwestern U. Press
paperback, 1979, p. 108
A related logo from
Columbia University's
Department of Art History
and Archaeology:
Also from that department:
Meyer Schapiro Professor
of Modern Art and Theory:
"There is no painter in the West
who can be unaware of
the symbolic power
of the cruciform shape
and the Pandora's box
of spiritual reference
that is opened
once one uses it."
"In the garden of Adding
live Even and Odd…"
— The Midrash Jazz Quartet in
City of God, by E. L. Doctorow
THE GREEK CROSS
A cross in which all the arms
are the same length.
are the same length.
Here, for reference, is a Greek cross
within a nine-square grid:
Related religious meditation for
Doctorow's "Garden of Adding"…
Types of Greek cross
illustrated in Wikipedia
under "cross":
THE BAPTISMAL CROSS
is a cross with eight arms:
a Greek cross, which is superimposed
on a Greek 'chi,' the first letter
of the Greek word for 'Christ.'
Since the number eight is symbolic
of rebirth or regeneration,
this cross is often used
as a baptismal cross.
a Greek cross, which is superimposed
on a Greek 'chi,' the first letter
of the Greek word for 'Christ.'
Since the number eight is symbolic
of rebirth or regeneration,
this cross is often used
as a baptismal cross.
Related material:
Fritz Leiber's "spider"
or "double cross" logo.
See Why Me? and
A Shot at Redemption.
Happy Orthodox Easter.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Monday April 25, 2005
Mathematical Style:
Mac Lane Memorial, Part Trois
(See also Part I and Part II.)
“We have seen that there are many diverse styles that lead to success in mathematics. Choose one mathematician… from the ones we studied whose ‘mathematical style’ you find most rewarding for you…. Identify the mathematician and describe his or her mathematical style.”
| — Sarah J. Greenwald, take-home exam from Introduction to Mathematics at Appalachian State U., Boone, North Carolina |
From today’s Harvard Crimson:
Ex-Math Prof Mac Lane, 95, Dies
[Saunders] Mac Lane was most famous for the ground-breaking paper he co-wrote with Samuel Eilenberg of Columbia in 1945 which introduced category theory, a framework to show how mathematical structures relate to each other. This branch of algebra has since influenced most mathematical fields and also has functions in philosophy and linguistics, but was first dismissed by many practical mathematicians as too abstract to be useful.
Gade University Professor of Mathematics Barry Mazur, a friend of the late Mac Lane, recalled that the paper had at first been rejected from a lower-caliber mathematical journal because the editor thought that it was “more devoid of content” than any other he had read.
“Saunders wrote back and said, ‘That’s the point,'” Mazur said. “And in some ways that’s the genius of it. It’s the barest, most Beckett-like vocabulary that incorporates the theory and nothing else.”
He likened it to a sparse grammar of nouns and verbs and a limited vocabulary that is presented “in such a deft way that it will help you understand any language you wish to understand and any language will fit into it.”
Also from Appalachian State University
(with illustration by Ingmar Bergman):
“In my hour of weakness,that old enemy
tries to steal my soul.
But when he comes
like a flood to surround me
My God will step in
and a standard he’ll raise.”
Comments Off on Monday April 25, 2005