Log24

"I could a tale unfold…" — Hamlet's father's ghost

Or not.

The following Log24 excerpts are from a noted mathematician's
recent date of death, and the preceding date.

Infolded:

“In the garden of Adding,
Live Even and Odd….”
— The Midrash Jazz Quartet in
       City of God , by E. L. Doctorow

Perspectives:

A sketch, adapted from Girl Scouts of Palo Alto —

Click the sketch for further details.

“… Which makes it a gilt-edged priority that one  of us
gets into that Krell lab and takes that brain boost.”

— American adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tempest , 1956

Recent posts on hotels and education suggest a review.
See “Child Buyer” in this journal.

From John Hersey’s The Child Buyer  (1960):

“I was wondering about that this morning…
About forgetting. I’ve always had an idea that
each memory was a kind of picture,
an insubstantial picture. I’ve thought of it as
suddenly coming into your mind when you need it,
something you’ve seen, something you’ve heard,
then it may stay awhile, or else it flies out, then
maybe it comes back another time….
If all the pictures went out, if I forgot everything,
where would they go? Just out into the air? Into the sky?
Back home around my bed, where my dreams stay?”

“We keep coming back and coming back
To the real: to the hotel instead of the hymns….”

— Wallace Stevens

— Postcard from eBay 

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/
Press-Agent-And-Broadway-Executive-Harvey-Sabinson-Dies-20190420.

See also "Press Agent" in this journal and a post from Maundy Thursday,
the date of Sabinson's reported death . . .

For the former, see the previous post.

For the latter, see yesterday's The Unfolding.

Related material —

(Screenshot at 9:08 PM ET)

Heimel on Dating —

<meta property="article:published"
itemprop="datePublished"
content="2018-02-27T19:37:54-05:00" />

"I could a tale unfold …"

(Continued from Seize the Dia,  April 6)

Two chess games by Fischer, against two brothers—

1956: "In this game, Fischer (playing Black) demonstrates
noteworthy innovation and improvisation." — Wikipedia

1963: "Fischer [playing Black] had engineered a brilliantly
disguised trap for him and … he had fallen into it." — NY Times

See also this evening's Times  obituaries and The Unfolding.

Some context:  The Crosswicks Curse.

A chess set previously mentioned in this journal—

These chessmen appeared in the weblog Minimalissimo 
on Sept. 20, 2010. In Log24 on that date, the issue was
not so much the chessmen as the underlying board.
See "The Unfolding." See also the following from
the Occupy Space  gallery in Limerick today—

Microsoft plans Windows 8 compatibility with mobile devices

"This won't be just another upgrade. Windows 8 is nothing less than the linchpin to Microsoft's strategy for keeping Windows relevant— if not resurgent— as the shift to the post-PC computing era unfolds.

'The stakes are huge,' says Charles King, principal analyst at research firm Pund-IT. 'The company must play outside its comfort zone, but if Microsoft succeeds, the potential opportunities could be significant.'"

— Byron Acohido in USA TODAY this evening

Yesterday's 7:20 AM Google News—

From Cliff Robertson's 1958 TV classic "Days of Wine and Roses"—

From Fritz Leiber's 1959 sci-fi classic "Damnation Morning" —

She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming implement
that looked by quick turns to me like a knife, a gun,
a slim sceptre, and a delicate branding iron— especially when
its tip sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.

“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.

“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the fourth dimension or only die in it.”

From this evening's online New York Times—

See also Don DeLillo's Point Omega , a novel published on Groundhog Day, 2010.

http://www.wittgen-cam.ac.uk/biogre9.html —

1935

With the expiry of his five-year Research Fellowship at Trinity College Wittgenstein was faced once more with the problem of loss of career. Accordingly he planned a journey to the Soviet Union, to find out whether he could find a suitable post there. Wittgenstein’s constant quest for the right career was not, as it is often misunderstood, a flight from himself. Rather, it was a search for the right place, a being at one with himself: Return him [Man] to his rightful element and everything will unfold and appear as healthy. (MS 125)

Since 1933/34 he had been taking lessons in Russian from the philosopher Fanja Pascal, initially with Francis Skinner. In June he asked Keynes for an introduction to the Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan M. Maiski. He sought contacts in two places above all, at the Northern Institute in Leningrad and the Institute for National Minorities in Moscow, writing to Keynes on 6 July: These Institutes, as I am told, deal with people who want to go to the ‘colonies’ the newly colonized parts at the periphery of the U. S. S. R. (Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore)

On 12 September Wittgenstein arrived in Leningrad. There he met the author and educator Guryevich at the Northern Institute, then an autonomous faculty of Leningrad University. On the evening of the following day he travelled on to Moscow, arriving there on the morning of the 14th. Here he had contacts with various western Europeans and Americans, including the correspondent of the Daily Worker, Pat Sloane. Most of his discussions, however, were with scientists, for example the young mathematician Yanovskaya and the philosopher Yushevich from Moscow University, who were both close to so-called Mach Marxism and the Vienna Circle. He was invited by the philosopher Tatiana Nikolayeva Gornstein, a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, to teach philosophy at Leningrad University. He traveled to Kazakhstan, where he was offered a chair at the famous university where Tolstoy once studied. On 1 October he was back in Cambridge. The trip was shorter than planned, and it appears that he had given up the idea of settling in Russia.

His friend Gilbert Pattison, who picked him up from the ship on his return, recalled that Wittgenstein’s view was that he could not live there himself: One could live there, but only if one kept in mind the whole time that one could never speak one’s mind. … It is as though one were to spend the rest of one’s life in an army, any army, and that is a rather difficult thing for people who are educated. (Interview with Pattison)

From the current index to obituaries at Telegraph.co.uk—

Teufel is also featured in today's New York Times—

"Mr. Teufel became a semicelebrity, helped in no small part by his last name, which means 'devil' in German."

From Group Analysis ,  June 1993, vol. 26 no. 2, 203-212—

The Problem of Good and Evil

by Ronald Sandison, Ledbury, Herefordshire HR8 2EY, UK

In my contribution to the Group Analysis Special Section: "Aspects of Religion in Group Analysis" (Sandison, 1993) I hinted that any consideration of a spiritual dimension to the group involves us in a discussion on whether we are dealing with good or evil spirits. But if we say that God is in the group, why is not the Devil there also? Can good and evil coexist in the same group matrix? Is the recognition of evil "nothing but" the ability to distinguish between good and bad? If not, then what is evil? Is it no more than the absence of good?

These and other questions were worked on at a joint Institute of Group Analysis and Group-Analytic Society (London) Workshop entitled "The Problem of Good and Evil." We considered the likelihood that good and evil coexist in all of us, as well as in the whole of the natural world, not only on earth, but in the cosmos and in God himself What we actually do with good and evil is to split them apart, thereby shelving the problem but at the same time creating irreconcilable opposites. This article examines this splitting and how we can work with it psychoanalytically.

This suggests a biblical remark—

"Now there was a day… when the sons of God
came to present themselves before the Lord,
and Satan came also among them."

— Job 1:6, quoted by Chesterton in The Man Who Was Thursday

Sandison died on June 18. See the Thursday, August 5, Log24 post "The Matrix."

Teufel died on July 6. See the Log24 posts for that day.

The title of this  post, "rift designs," refers to a recurring theme in the July 6 posts. It is taken from Heidegger.

From a recent New Yorker  review of Absence of Mind  by Marilynne Robinson—

"Robinson is eloquent in her defense of the mind’s prerogatives, but her call for a renewed metaphysics might be better served by rereading Heidegger than by dusting off the Psalms."

Following this advice, we find—

"Propriation gathers the rift-design of the saying and unfolds it  in such a way that it becomes the well-joined structure of a manifold showing."

— p. 415 of Heidegger's Basic Writings , edited by David Farrell Krell, HarperCollins paperback, 1993

"Das Ereignis versammelt den Aufriß der Sage und entfaltet ihn zum Gefüge des vielfältigen Zeigens." 

— Heidegger, Weg zur Sprache

"Heidegger suggests that we experience the saying of language as a shining forth:

'It lets what is coming to presence shine forth, lets what is withdrawing into absence vanish.  The saying is by no means the supplemental linguistic expression of what shines forth; rather, all shining and fading depend on the saying that shows.' (pp. 413-414).

But what is the basis and origin of this possibility of saying?  The happening of saying in the clearing, its allowing things to shine forth, can also be called an 'owning.' Owning is the event of a thing’s coming into its own, of its showing itself as itself. Heidegger also calls it 'propriating,' 'en-owning,' or Ereignis:

'Propriation gathers the rift-design of the saying and unfolds it in such a way that it becomes the well-joined structure of a manifold showing. (p. 415)'"

— "Heidegger: On the Way to Language," by Paul Livingston

Page references are apparently to Heidegger's Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, HarperCollins paperback, 1993.

See also Shining Forth.

New York Times, January 12, 2010, 12:26 PM–

"Spider-Man" Musical Will Refund Tickets

"With… direction by Julie Taymor ['Frida'], 'Spider-Man' has been marred by delays….

The musical’s troubles have unfolded at the same time that the next “Spider-Man” movie has been descending into disarray…."

Related material:

"No Great Magic," by Fritz Leiber–

"The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a faint tattoo in the form of an 'S' styled like a yin-yang symbol left a little open.

'Snake!' he hissed. 'Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent!'"

“Ay que bonito es volar  
    A las dos de la mañana….”
— “La Bruja“

Prominent literary intellectuals often like to make familiar reference to the technical terminology of mathematical logic or philosophy of language. A friend of mine overheard the following conversation in Cambridge during l’affaire Derrida, when the proposal to grant an honorary degree to that gentleman met serious academic opposition in the university. A journalist covering the fracas asked a Prominent Literary Intellectual what he took to be Derrida’s importance in the scheme of things. ‘Well,’ the PLI confided graciously, unblushingly, ‘Gödel showed that every theory is inconsistent unless it is supported from outside. Derrida showed that there is no outside.’

Now, there are at least three remarkable things about this. First, the thing that Gödel was supposed to show could not possibly be shown, since there are many demonstrably consistent theories. Second, therefore, Gödel indeed did not show it, and neither did he purport to do so. Third, it makes no sense to say that an inconsistent theory could become consistent by being ‘supported from outside’, whatever that might mean (inconsistency sticks; you cannot get rid of it by addition, only by subtraction). So what Derrida is said to have done is just as impossible as what Gödel was said to have done.

These mistakes should fail you in an undergraduate logic or math or philosophy course. But they are minor considerations in the world of the PLI. The point is that the mere mention of Gödel (like the common invocation of ‘hierarchies’ and ‘metalanguages’) gives a specious impression of something thrillingly deep and thrillingly mathematical and scientific (theory! dazzling! Einstein!) And, not coincidentally, it gives the PLI a flattering image of being something of a hand at these things, an impresario of the thrills. I expect the journalist swooned.

In memory of poet May Swenson and sports novelist Rozanne Ruth “Zan” Knudson:

Maureen Dowd in today’s New York Times:

“It’s a similar syndrome to the one Katharine Hepburn’s star athlete and her supercilious fiancé have in ‘Pat and Mike.’

The fiancé is always belittling Hepburn, so whenever he’s in the stands, her tennis and golf go kerflooey. Finally, her manager, played by Spencer Tracy, asks the fiancé to stay away from big matches, explaining, ‘You are the wrong jockey for this chick.’

‘You know, except when you’re around, we got a very valuable piece of property here,’ he says, later adding, ‘When you’re around, she’s no good, she’s dead, see?'”

“Then she has a vision of herself,
enclosed by an unfolded hypercube,
and then an immense screen
behind it covered by complex,
     ever-shifting patterns….”

“Does the word ‘tesseract’
mean anything to you?“
— Robert A. Heinlein

Wikipedia on the tesseract:

Robert A. Heinlein in Glory Road:

Johnny Cash: “And behold, a white horse.”

On The Last Battle, a book in the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis:

Lewis said in “The Weight of Glory”—
 

On enchantments that need to be broken:

See the description of the Eater of Souls in Glory Road and of Scientism in

• Mathematics and Narrative,

• The Rhetoric of Scientism,

• and the C. S. Lewis classic,
  That Hideous Strength.