Log24

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Thursday May 26, 2005

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 4:00 am
The Changing

The previous entry dealt with a transformation
of the diamond figure from Plato’s Meno
into a visual proof of the Pythagorean theorem:

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/DiamondTurning.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Here is a transformation of Plato’s diamond
into the “gyronny” pattern of heraldry:

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/Gyronny.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
Viking Heraldry

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/DiamondChanging2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

For the mathematics dealing with
this sort of transformation, see
The Diamond 16 Puzzle and Diamond Theory.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Wednesday May 25, 2005

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 2:22 pm

The Turning

Readers who have an Amazon.com account may view book pages relevant to the previous entry.  See page 77 of The Way We Think, by Fauconnier and Turner (Amazon search term = Meno).  This page discusses both the Pythagorean theorem and Plato's diamond figure in the Meno, but fails to "blend" these two topics.  See also page 53 of The History of Mathematics, by Roger Cooke (first edition), where these two topics are in fact blended (Amazon search term = Pythagorean).  The illustration below is drawn from the Cooke book.

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050525-Figs.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Cooke demonstrates how the Pythagorean theorem might have been derived by "blending" Plato's diamond (left) with the idea of moving the diamond's corners (right).

The previous entry dealt with a conference on mathematics and narrative.  Above is an example I like of mathematics…. Here is an example I like of narrative: 

Kate felt quite dizzy. She didn't know exactly what it was
that had just happened, but she felt pretty damn  certain  that
it  was  the  sort of experience that her mother would not have
approved of on a first date.
     "Is this all part of what we have to do to go to  Asgard?"
she said. "Or are you just fooling around?"
     "We will go to Asgard...now," he said.
     At that moment he raised his hand as if to pluck an apple,
but instead of plucking he made a tiny, sharp turning movement.
The effect  was as if he had twisted the entire world through a
billionth part of a billionth  part  of  a  degree.  Everything
shifted,  was  for  a  moment  minutely  out of focus, and then
snapped back again as a suddenly different world.

— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

And here is a blend of the concepts "Asgard" and "conference":

"Asgard
    During the Interuniverse Society conference,
    a bridge was opened to Valhalla…."

  Bifrost
     In Norse myth, the rainbow bridge
     that connected Earth to Asgard,
     home of the gods.  It was extended
     to Tellus Tertius during the
     Interuniverse Society conference"

— From A Heinlein Concordance

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050525-Rainbow.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

 

— Front page picture from a
local morning newspaper published
today, Wednesday, May 25, 2005

 

As George Balanchine once asked,
"How much story do you want?"

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Tuesday March 22, 2005

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 4:01 pm

Make a Différance

From Frida Saal's
Lacan The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050322-Diamond.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors. Derrida:

"Our proposal includes the lozenge (diamond) in between the names, because in the relationship / non-relationship that is established among them, a tension is created that implies simultaneously a union and a disjunction, in the perspective of a theoretical encounter that is at the same time necessary and impossible. That is the meaning of the lozenge that joins and separates the two proper names. For that reason their respective works become totally non-superposable and at the same time they were built with an awareness, or at least a partial awareness, of each other. What prevails between both of them is the différance, the Derridean signifier that will become one of the main issues in this presentation."

 


From a Contemporary Literary Theory website:

"Différance is that which all signs have, what constitutes them as signs, as signs are not that to which they refer: i) they differ, and hence open a space from that which they represent, and ii) they defer, and hence open up a temporal chain, or, participate in temporality. As well, following de Sassure's famous argument, signs 'mean' by differing from other signs. The coined word 'différance' refers to at once the differing and the deferring of signs. Taken to the ontological level†, the differing and deferring of signs from what they mean, means that every sign repeats the creation of space and time; and ultimately, that différance is the ultimate phenomenon in the universe, an operation that is not an operation, both active and passive, that which enables and results from Being itself."

From a text purchased on
Make a Difference Day, Oct. 23, 1999:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050322-Fig39.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.22. Without using the Pythagorean Theorem prove that the hypotenuse of  an isosceles right triangle will have the length The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050322-Sqtr2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.  if the equal legs have the length 1.  Suggestion: Consider the similar triangles in Fig. 39.
23.  The ancient Greeks regarded the Pythagorean Theorem as involving areas, and they proved it by means of areas.  We cannot do so now because we have not yet considered the idea of area.  Assuming for the moment, however, the idea of the area of a square, use this idea instead of similar triangles and proportion in Ex. 22 above to show that x = The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050322-Sqtr2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors. .

 

— Page 98 of Basic Geometry, by George David Birkhoff, Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, and Ralph Beatley, Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University (Scott, Foresman 1941)



Though it may be true, as the president of Harvard recently surmised, that women are inherently inferior to men at abstract thought — in particular, pure mathematics*  — they may in other respects be quite superior to men:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050322-Reba2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

The above is from October 1999.
See also Naturalized Epistemology,
from Women's History Month, 2001.

* See the remarks of Frida Saal above and of Barbara Johnson on mathematics (The Shining of May 29, cited in Readings for St. Patrick's Day).


† For the diamond symbol at "the ontological level," see Modal Theology, Feb. 21, 2005.  See also Socrates on the immortality of the soul in Plato's Meno, source of the above Basic Geometry diamond.

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Sunday February 20, 2005

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 2:20 pm

Relativity Blues

Today, February 20, is the 19th anniversary of my note The Relativity Problem in Finite Geometry.  Here is some related material.

In 1931, the Christian writer Charles Williams grappled with the theology of time, space, free will, and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics (anticipating by many years the discussion of this topic by physicists beginning in the 1950's).

(Some pure mathematics — untainted by physics or theology — that is nevertheless related, if only by poetic analogy, to Williams's 1931 novel, Many Dimensions, is discussed in the above-mentioned note and in a generalization, Solomon's Cube.)

On the back cover of Williams's 1931 novel, the current publisher, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan, makes the following statement:

"Replete with rich religious imagery, Many Dimensions explores the relation between predestination and free will as it depicts different human responses to redemptive transcendence."

One possible response to such statements was recently provided in some detail by a Princeton philosophy professor.  See On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton University Press, 2005.

A more thoughtful response would take into account the following:

1. The arguments presented in favor of philosopher John Calvin, who discussed predestination, in The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought, by Marilynne Robinson

2. The physics underlying Einstein's remarks on free will, God, and dice
 
3. The physics underlying Rebecca Goldstein's novel Properties of Light and Paul Preuss's novels  Secret Passages and Broken Symmetries

4. The physics underlying the recent so-called "free will theorem" of John Conway and Simon Kochen of Princeton University

5. The recent novel Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson, which deals not with philosophy, but with lives influenced by philosophy — indirectly, by the philosophy of the aforementioned John Calvin.

From a review of Gilead by Jane Vandenburgh:  

"In The Death of Adam, Robinson shows Jean Cauvin to be the foremost prophet of humanism whose Protestant teachings against the hierarchies of the Roman church set in motion the intellectual movements that promoted widespread literacy among the middle and lower classes, led to both the American and French revolutions, and not only freed African slaves in the United States but brought about suffrage for women. It's odd then that through our culture's reverse historicism, the term 'Calvinism' has come to mean 'moralistic repression.'"

For more on what the Calvinist publishing firm Eerdmans calls "redemptive transcendence," see various July 2003 Log24.net entries.  If these entries include a fair amount of what Princeton philosophers call bullshit, let the Princeton philosophers meditate on the summary of Harvard philosophy quoted here on November 5 of last year, as well as the remarks of November 5, 2003,  and those of November 5, 2002.

From Many Dimensions (Eerdmans paperback, 1963, page 53):

"Lord Arglay had a suspicion that the Stone would be purely logical.  Yes, he thought, but what, in that sense, were the rules of its pure logic?"

A recent answer:

Modal Theology

"We symbolize logical necessity
with the box (box.gif (75 bytes))
and logical possibility
with the diamond (diamond.gif (82 bytes))."

— Keith Allen Korcz,
(Log24.net, 1/25/05)

And what do we           
   symbolize by  The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/Modal-diamondbox.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors. ?

"The possibilia that exist,
and out of which
the Universe arose,
are located in
     a necessary being…."

— Michael Sudduth,
Notes on
God, Chance, and Necessity
by Keith Ward,
Regius Professor of Divinity
at Christ Church College, Oxford
(the home of Lewis Carroll)

Sunday, January 2, 2005

Sunday January 2, 2005

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:20 am
Feast of Stephen

“Time had been canceled….
 And here he was again, in the ballroom.”

— Stephen King, The Shining

From a year ago today:

“Heaven was kind of a hat on the universe,
a lid that kept everything underneath it
where it belonged.”

 — Carrie Fisher,
Postcards from the Edge

     

“720 in  
the Book”
and
“Paradise“

From today’s New York Times:

The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05/050102-Shaw.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

“What’s funny, honey?”
— The Shining

Truth and Style and Always in Style.

Tuesday, January 6, 2004

Tuesday January 6, 2004

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 10:10 pm

720 in the Book

Searching for an epiphany on this January 6 (the Feast of the Epiphany), I started with Harvard Magazine, the current issue of January-February 2004.

An article titled On Mathematical Imagination concludes by looking forward to

“a New Instauration that will bring mathematics, at last, into its rightful place in our lives: a source of elation….”

Seeking the source of the phrase “new instauration,” I found it was due to Francis Bacon, who “conceived his New Instauration as the fulfilment of a Biblical prophecy and a rediscovery of ‘the seal of God on things,’ ” according to a web page by Nieves Mathews.

Hmm.

The Mathews essay leads to Peter Pesic, who, it turns out, has written a book that brings us back to the subject of mathematics:

Abel’s Proof:  An Essay
on the Sources and Meaning
of Mathematical Unsolvability

by Peter Pesic,
MIT Press, 2003

From a review:

“… the book is about the idea that polynomial equations in general cannot be solved exactly in radicals….

Pesic concludes his account after Abel and Galois… and notes briefly (p. 146) that following Abel, Jacobi, Hermite, Kronecker, and Brioschi, in 1870 Jordan proved that elliptic modular functions suffice to solve all polynomial equations.  The reader is left with little clarity on this sequel to the story….”

— Roger B. Eggleton, corrected version of a review in Gazette Aust. Math. Soc., Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 242-244

Here, it seems, is my epiphany:

“Elliptic modular functions suffice to solve all polynomial equations.”

Incidental Remarks
on Synchronicity,
Part I

Those who seek a star
on this Feast of the Epiphany
may click here.

Most mathematicians are (or should be) familiar with the work of Abel and Galois on the insolvability by radicals of quintic and higher-degree equations.

Just how such equations can be solved is a less familiar story.  I knew that elliptic functions were involved in the general solution of a quintic (fifth degree) equation, but I was not aware that similar functions suffice to solve all polynomial equations.

The topic is of interest to me because, as my recent web page The Proof and the Lie indicates, I was deeply irritated by the way recent attempts to popularize mathematics have sown confusion about modular functions, and I therefore became interested in learning more about such functions.  Modular functions are also distantly related, via the topic of “moonshine” and via the  “Happy Family” of the Monster group and the Miracle Octad Generator of R. T. Curtis, to my own work on symmetries of 4×4 matrices.

Incidental Remarks
on Synchronicity,
Part II

There is no Log24 entry for
December 30, 2003,
the day John Gregory Dunne died,
but see this web page for that date.

Here is what I was able to find on the Web about Pesic’s claim:

From Wolfram Research:

From Solving the Quintic —

“Some of the ideas described here can be generalized to equations of higher degree. The basic ideas for solving the sextic using Klein’s approach to the quintic were worked out around 1900. For algebraic equations beyond the sextic, the roots can be expressed in terms of hypergeometric functions in several variables or in terms of Siegel modular functions.”

From Siegel Theta Function —

“Umemura has expressed the roots of an arbitrary polynomial in terms of Siegel theta functions. (Mumford, D. Part C in Tata Lectures on Theta. II. Jacobian Theta Functions and Differential Equations. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser, 1984.)”

From Polynomial —

“… the general quintic equation may be given in terms of the Jacobi theta functions, or hypergeometric functions in one variable.  Hermite and Kronecker proved that higher order polynomials are not soluble in the same manner. Klein showed that the work of Hermite was implicit in the group properties of the icosahedron.  Klein’s method of solving the quintic in terms of hypergeometric functions in one variable can be extended to the sextic, but for higher order polynomials, either hypergeometric functions in several variables or ‘Siegel functions’ must be used (Belardinelli 1960, King 1996, Chow 1999). In the 1880s, Poincaré created functions which give the solution to the nth order polynomial equation in finite form. These functions turned out to be ‘natural’ generalizations of the elliptic functions.”

Belardinelli, G. “Fonctions hypergéométriques de plusieurs variables er résolution analytique des équations algébrique générales.” Mémoral des Sci. Math. 145, 1960.

King, R. B. Beyond the Quartic Equation. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser, 1996.

Chow, T. Y. “What is a Closed-Form Number.” Amer. Math. Monthly 106, 440-448, 1999. 

From Angel Zhivkov,

Preprint series,
Institut für Mathematik,
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin:

“… discoveries of Abel and Galois had been followed by the also remarkable theorems of Hermite and Kronecker:  in 1858 they independently proved that we can solve the algebraic equations of degree five by using an elliptic modular function….  Kronecker thought that the resolution of the equation of degree five would be a special case of a more general theorem which might exist.  This hypothesis was realized in [a] few cases by F. Klein… Jordan… showed that any algebraic equation is solvable by modular functions.  In 1984 Umemura realized the Kronecker idea in his appendix to Mumford’s book… deducing from a formula of Thomae… a root of [an] arbitrary algebraic equation by Siegel modular forms.”  

— “Resolution of Degree Less-than-or-equal-to Six Algebraic Equations by Genus Two Theta Constants“

Incidental Remarks
on Synchronicity,
Part III

From Music for Dunne’s Wake:

“Heaven was kind of a hat on the universe,
a lid that kept everything underneath it
where it belonged.”

— Carrie Fisher,
Postcards from the Edge

     

“720 in  
the Book”
and
“Paradise“

“The group Sp4(F2) has order 720,”
as does S6. — Angel Zhivkov, op. cit.

Those seeking
“a rediscovery of
‘the seal of God on things,’ “
as quoted by Mathews above,
should see
The Unity of Mathematics
and the related note
Sacerdotal Jargon.

For more remarks on synchronicity
that may or may not be relevant
to Harvard Magazine and to
the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings
that start tomorrow in Phoenix, see

Log24, June 2003.

For the relevance of the time
of this entry, 10:10, see

  1. the reference to Paradise
    on the “postcard” above, and
  2. Storyline (10/10, 2003).

Related recreational reading:

Labyrinth



The Shining

Shining Forth

Friday, January 2, 2004

Friday January 2, 2004

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:28 pm

Music for Dunne’s Wake

“Heaven was kind of a hat on the universe,
a lid that kept everything underneath it
where it belonged.”

 — Carrie Fisher,
Postcards from the Edge

     

“720 in  
the Book”
and
“Paradise“

Musical Note: A Star is Born

Natalie Wood played a six-year-old
in “Miracle on 34th Street,”
six factorial equals 720,
and Wood was born on 7/20, 1938.

“How I love music.”

— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938

For related metaphors, see
Immortal Diamond,
The Diamond Archetype, and
the first log24.net entry…
for July 20, 2002.

Wednesday, September 3, 2003

Wednesday September 3, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 3:00 pm

Reciprocity

From my entry of Sept. 1, 2003:

"…the principle of taking and giving, of learning and teaching, of listening and storytelling, in a word: of reciprocity….

… E. M. Forster famously advised his readers, 'Only connect.' 'Reciprocity' would be Michael Kruger's succinct philosophy, with all that the word implies."

— William Boyd, review of Himmelfarb, New York Times Book Review, October 30, 1994

Last year's entry on this date: 

Today's birthday:
James Joseph Sylvester

"Mathematics is the music of reason."
— J. J. Sylvester

Sylvester, a nineteenth-century mathematician, coined the phrase "synthematic totals" to describe some structures based on 6-element sets that R. T. Curtis has called "rather unwieldy objects." See Curtis's abstract, Symmetric Generation of Finite Groups, John Baez's essay, Some Thoughts on the Number 6, and my website, Diamond Theory.

The picture above is of the complete graph K6 …  Six points with an edge connecting every pair of points… Fifteen edges in all.

Diamond theory describes how the 15 two-element subsets of a six-element set (represented by edges in the picture above) may be arranged as 15 of the 16 parts of a 4×4 array, and how such an array relates to group-theoretic concepts, including Sylvester's synthematic totals as they relate to constructions of the Mathieu group M24.

If diamond theory illustrates any general philosophical principle, it is probably the interplay of opposites….  "Reciprocity" in the sense of Lao Tzu.  See

Reciprocity and Reversal in Lao Tzu.

For a sense of "reciprocity" more closely related to Michael Kruger's alleged philosophy, see the Confucian concept of Shu (Analects 15:23 or 24) described in

Shu: Reciprocity.

Kruger's novel is in part about a Jew: the quintessential Jewish symbol, the star of David, embedded in the K6 graph above, expresses the reciprocity of male and female, as my May 2003 archives illustrate.  The star of David also appears as part of a graphic design for cubes that illustrate the concepts of diamond theory:

Click on the design for details.

Those who prefer a Jewish approach to physics can find the star of David, in the form of K6, applied to the sixteen 4×4 Dirac matrices, in

A Graphical Representation
of the Dirac Algebra.

The star of David also appears, if only as a heuristic arrangement, in a note that shows generating partitions of the affine group on 64 points arranged in two opposing triplets.

Having thus, as the New York Times advises, paid tribute to a Jewish symbol, we may note, in closing, a much more sophisticated and subtle concept of reciprocity due to Euler, Legendre, and Gauss.  See

The Jewel of Arithmetic and

The Golden Theorem.

Thursday, March 13, 2003

Thursday March 13, 2003

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:44 pm

ART WARS:

From The New Yorker, issue of March 17, 2003, Clive James on Aldous Huxley:

“The Perennial Philosophy, his 1945 book compounding all the positive thoughts of West and East into a tutti-frutti of moral uplift, was the equivalent, in its day, of It Takes a Village: there was nothing in it to object to, and that, of course, was the objection.”

For a cultural artifact that is less questionably perennial, see Huxley’s story “Young Archimedes.”

Plato, Pythagoras, and
the diamond figure

Plato’s Diamond in the Meno
Plato as a precursor of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “immortal diamond.” An illustration shows the ur-diamond figure.

Plato’s Diamond Revisited
Ivars Peterson’s Nov. 27, 2000 column “Square of the Hypotenuse” which discusses the diamond figure as used by Pythagoras (perhaps) and Plato. Other references to the use of Plato’s diamond in the proof of the Pythagorean theorem:

Huxley:

“… and he proceeded to prove the theorem of Pythagoras — not in Euclid’s way, but by the simpler and more satisfying method which was, in all probability, employed by Pythagoras himself….
‘You see,’ he said, ‘it seemed to me so beautiful….’
I nodded. ‘Yes, it’s very beautiful,’ I said — ‘it’s very beautiful indeed.'”
— Aldous Huxley, “Young Archimedes,” in Collected Short Stories, Harper, 1957, pp. 246 – 247

Heath:

Sir Thomas L. Heath, in his commentary on Euclid I.47, asks how Pythagoreans discovered the Pythagorean theorem and the irrationality of the diagonal of a unit square. His answer? Plato’s diamond.
(See Heath, Sir Thomas Little (1861-1940),
The thirteen books of Euclid’s Elements translated from the text of Heiberg with introduction and commentary. Three volumes. University Press, Cambridge, 1908. Second edition: University Press, Cambridge, 1925. Reprint: Dover Publications, New York, 1956.

Other sites on the alleged
“diamond” proof of Pythagoras

Colorful diagrams at Cut-the-Knot

Illustrated legend of the diamond proof

Babylonian version of the diamond proof

For further details of Huxley’s story, see

The Practice of Mathematics,

Part I, by Robert P. Langlands, from a lecture series at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

From the New Yorker Contributors page for St. Patrick’s Day, 2003:

“Clive James (Books, p. 143) has a new collection, As of This Writing: The Essential Essays, 1968-2002, which will be published in June.”

See also my entry “The Boys from Uruguay” and the later entry “Lichtung!” on the Deutsche Schule Montevideo in Uruguay.

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

Wednesday February 12, 2003

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 3:00 am

Diamond Life
(Von Neumann’s Song, Part II)

A reader of yesterday’s entry “St. John von Neumann’s Song” suggested the relevance of little Dougie Hofstadter‘s book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.  While the title of this work does continue the “golden” theme of my last three entries, Dougie is not playing in von Neumann’s league.  The nature of this league is suggested by yesterday’s citation of

Abstract Harmonic Analysis. 

For work that is more in von Neumann’s league than in Hofstadter’s, see the following

harmonic analysis abstract:

VECTOR-VALUED EXTENSIONS
OF SOME CLASSICAL THEOREMS
IN HARMONIC ANALYSIS

Maria Girardi and Lutz Weis

Abstract:
…. The approach used combines methods from Fourier analysis and the geometry of Banach spaces, such as R-boundedness.

A related paper by the same authors:

CRITERIA FOR R-BOUNDEDNESS
OF OPERATOR FAMILIES

Abstract:
…smooth operator-valued functions have a R-bounded range, where the degree of smoothness depends on the geometry of the Banach space.

Those who would like to make a connection to music in the charmingly childlike manner of Hofstadter are invited to sing a few choruses of “How do you solve a problem like Maria?“

Personally, I prefer the following lyrics:

Diamond life, lover boy;
We move in space with minimum waste and maximum joy.
City lights and business nights
When you require streetcar desire for higher heights.

No place for beginners or sensitive hearts
When sentiment is left to chance.
No place to be ending but somewhere to start.

No need to ask.
He’s a smooth operator….

Words and Music: Sade Adu and Ray St. John

Some may wish to alter the last five syllables of these lyrics in accordance with yesterday’s entry on another St. John.

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Thursday October 31, 2002

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:07 pm

Plato's
Diamond

From The Unknowable (1999), by Gregory J. Chaitin, who has written extensively about his constant, which he calls Omega:

"What is Omega? It's just the diamond-hard distilled and crystallized essence of mathematical truth! It's what you get when you compress tremendously the coal of redundant mathematical truth…" 

Charles H. Bennett has written about Omega as a cabalistic number.

Here is another result with religious associations which, historically, has perhaps more claim to be called the "diamond-hard essence" of mathematical truth: The demonstration in Plato's Meno that a diamond inscribed in a square has half the area of the square (or that, vice-versa, the square has twice the area of the diamond).

From Ivars Peterson's discussion of Plato's diamond and the Pythagorean theorem:

"In his textbook The History of Mathematics, Roger Cooke of the University of Vermont describes how the Babylonians might have discovered the Pythagorean theorem more than 1,000 years before Pythagoras.

Basing his account on a passage in Plato's dialogue Meno, Cooke suggests that the discovery arose when someone, either for a practical purpose or perhaps just for fun, found it necessary to construct a square twice as large as a given square…."

From "Halving a Square," a presentation of Plato's diamond by Alexander Bogomolny, the moral of the story:

SOCRATES: And if the truth about reality is always in our soul, the soul must be immortal….

From "Renaissance Metaphysics and the History of Science," at The John Dee Society website:

Galileo on Plato's diamond:

"Cassirer, drawing attention to Galileo's frequent use of the Meno, particularly the incident of the slave's solving without instruction a problem in geometry by 'natural' reason stimulated by questioning, remarks, 'Galileo seems to accept all the consequences drawn by Plato from this fact…..'"

Roger Bacon on Plato's diamond:

"Fastening on the incident of the slave in the Meno, which he had found reproduced in Cicero, Bacon argued from it 'wherefore since this knowledge (of mathematics) is almost innate and as it were precedes discovery and learning or at least is less in need of them than other sciences, it will be first among sciences and will precede others disposing us towards them.'"

It is perhaps appropriate to close this entry, made on All Hallows' Eve, with a link to a page on Dr. John Dee himself.

Wednesday, October 2, 2002

Wednesday October 2, 2002

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:52 am

A Crackpot with Power

The following is an greatly abbreviated version of a sci.math group thread on an attempted proof of the four-color theorem.

  • Chip Eastham 2000-10-13 :

    There is a nicely presented approach to proving the Four Color Theorem… at the following… site:

    http://www.geocities.com/dharwadker/index.html

  • “Default” 2000-10-13:

    Where in the proof is the hypothesis of “requiring N colors” (not colorable with N-1 colors) used?

  • Michael Varney 2000-10-14:

    (Following some banter) Go play elsewhere if you buy into 4CT crackpot proofs.

  • “Default” 2000-10-14:

    The proposed 4CT proof is hardly crackpot, and may contain some new ideas (or reformulations of old ones).

  • Michael Varney 2000-10-14:

    That’s what all crackpots say. Join the club.

  • David Eppstein 2000-10-14:

    My first-glance reaction is that it’s an amazing collection of undigested chunks of heavy equipment. It seems more designed to confuse any expert (by making sure it contains something the expert doesn’t understand) than to convince anyone of the truth of the 4CT.

  • “Default” 2000-10-15:

    Skimming the proof I did not see any place where the minimality of the chromatic number N was used, nor any explanation of why a 12-fold covering is introduced (other than it fits the numerology needed to rule out a Steiner system). This makes me skeptical about the proof, but it’s hardly crackpot.

The author of this attempted proof, Ashay Dharwadker, is now an editor of the following Open Directory Project categories:

Science: Math: Combinatorics   and
Science: Math: Combinatorics: Graph Theory.

I agree with “Default,” Eppstein, and Varney.

As “Default” notes, the proof is invalid,  since it does not even use the hypotheses of the theorem.  I pointed this out in November 2000 in a sub-page of a website in the Open Directory combinatorics category,

I also agree with Eppstein that Dharwadker’s writing seems “designed to confuse.” 

Finally, I strongly agree with Varney that Dharwadker is a crackpot.  I reluctantly arrived at this conclusion only last night, after learning that

  1. Dharwadker, who formerly had edited only the graph theory Open Directory category, now is a co-editor of its parent category, combinatorics, and that
  2. My website containing a criticism of Dharwadker’s work has been deleted from the Open Directory combinatics listings. This site, “Diamond Theory,” is only incidentally related to Dharwadker’s attempted proof, and has been in the Open Directory combinatorics listing for about two years.  

Crackpots are annoying, but crackpots with power are both contemptible and infuriating.  I am currently trying to rectify the appalling mistake made by whoever appointed Dharwadker to a position of responsibility.

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