"Remember, remember
the eighth of September."
Update of 6 AM Sept. 27:
A search for related material
on The Eighth of September
yields a Pablo Neruda poem
and a Barbara Stevens Sullivan
novel, both with that title.
Also by Sullivan . . .
See as well a Log24 post from 2016, "The Mystery of O,"
on June 29, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
From the midnight beginning June 27, 2016 —
This review of the above post was suggested by the
Galois-related footnote in the previous post and by
an obituary in this morning's online New York Times .
See as well a July 6 obituary for the same person in
The Martha's Vineyard Times .
The "I" of "I Am that I Am" has been described as a creation of
an "ur-unity" (see the Anderson passage below) and this ur-unity,
denoted by "O," has been described elsewhere as "a primary reality"
(see the Sullivan passage below). These descriptions are of course
much less clear than those usually given for the similar purely
mathematical * notations "0" and "1."
See also Quine's Shema in "Is Nothing Sacred?" —
0! = 1.
Quoted here on July 30, 2015 —
Linked to here on June 29, 2016 —
* Note for mathematicians: Here characteristic 0 is assumed .
Quine's Shema does not apply to Galois.
Erica Goode in the online New York Times tonight —
"Irving Gottesman, a pioneer in the field of behavioral genetics
whose work on the role of heredity in schizophrenia helped
transform the way people thought about the origins of serious
mental illness, died on June 29 at his home in Edina, Minn., a
suburb of Minneapolis. He was 85.
His wife, Carol, said he died while taking an afternoon nap.
Although Dr. Gottesman had some health problems, she said,
his death was unexpected, and several of his colleagues said
they received emails from him earlier that day."
A note from noon (EDT) on that day, June 29, for the Church of Synchronology —
A detail from the page mentioned in the June 29 post above —
A passage related to the word "soul" discussed by Sullivan —
See as well a related biblical passage, better known at the time of Royce (ca. 1892)
than today, that would probably mean nothing to the late Dr. Gottesman.
"At CERN the LHC has reached design luminosity,* and is
breaking records with a fast pace of new collisions. This may
have something to do with the report that the LHC is also
about to tear open a portal to another dimension."
See also the following figure from the Log24 Bion posts —
— and Greg Egan's short story "Luminous":
"The theory was, we’d located part of the boundary
between two incompatible systems of mathematics –
both of which were physically true, in their respective
domains. Any sequence of deductions which stayed
entirely on one side of the defect – whether it was the
'near side', where conventional arithmetic applied, or
the 'far side', where the alternative took over – would
be free from contradictions. But any sequence which
crossed the border would give rise to absurdities –
hence S could lead to not-S."
— Greg Egan, Luminous
(Kindle Locations 1284-1288).
* See a definition.
From Psychoanalytic Aesthetics: The British School ,
by Nicola Glover, Chapter 4 —
|
In his last theoretical book, Attention and Interpretation (1970), Bion has clearly cast off the mathematical and scientific scaffolding of his earlier writings and moved into the aesthetic and mystical domain. He builds upon the central role of aesthetic intuition and the Keats's notion of the 'Language of Achievement', which
… includes language that is both Bion distinguishes it from the kind of language which is a substitute for thought and action, a blocking of achievement which is lies [sic ] in the realm of 'preconception' – mindlessness as opposed to mindfulness. The articulation of this language is possible only through love and gratitude; the forces of envy and greed are inimical to it.. This language is expressed only by one who has cast off the 'bondage of memory and desire'. He advised analysts (and this has caused a certain amount of controversy) to free themselves from the tyranny of the past and the future; for Bion believed that in order to make deep contact with the patient's unconscious the analyst must rid himself of all preconceptions about his patient – this superhuman task means abandoning even the desire to cure . The analyst should suspend memories of past experiences with his patient which could act as restricting the evolution of truth. The task of the analyst is to patiently 'wait for a pattern to emerge'. For as T.S. Eliot recognised in Four Quartets , 'only by the form, the pattern / Can words or music reach/ The stillness'.30. The poet also understood that 'knowledge' (in Bion's sense of it designating a 'preconception' which blocks thought, as opposed to his designation of a 'pre -conception' which awaits its sensory realisation), 'imposes a pattern and falsifies'
For the pattern is new in every moment The analyst, by freeing himself from the 'enchainment to past and future', casts off the arbitrary pattern and waits for new aesthetic form to emerge, which will (it is hoped) transform the content of the analytic encounter. 29. Attention and Interpretation (Tavistock, 1970), p. 125 30. Collected Poems (Faber, 1985), p. 194. 31. Ibid., p. 199. |
See also the previous posts now tagged Bion.
Preconception as mindlessness is illustrated by Rubik's cube, and
"pre -conception" as mindfulness is illustrated by n×n×n Froebel cubes
for n= 1, 2, 3, 4.
Suitably coordinatized, the Froebel cubes become Galois cubes,
and illustrate a new approach to the mathematics of space .
For the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul —
In memory of Alvin Toffler and Simon Ramo,
a review of figures from the midnight that began
the date of their deaths, June 27, 2016 —
The 3×3×3 Galois Cube
See also Rubik in this journal.
"The domain of O has been explored by philosophers and mystics
under titles like the Absolute, Ultimate Reality or Ultimate Truth,
the Ground of Being, God or the godhead. O is the world of Plato’s
ideal forms, Kant’s things-in-themselves, Bion’s pre-conceptions,
Klein’s inborn phantasies and Jung’s archetypes."
— Barbara Stevens Sullivan on page 38 of her book
The Mystery of Analytical Work: Weavings from Jung and Bion ,
Routledge first edition, 2010
See also Bion in The Search for Charles Wallace, and …
Click on the image for some context.
From a search in this journal for Euclid + Galois + Interplay —
The 3×3×3 Galois Cube
A tune suggested by the first image above —
Rubik's Cube Core Assembly — Swarthmore Cube Project, 2008 —
"Children of the Common Core" —
There is also a central structure within Solomon's Cube —
For a more elaborate entertainment along these lines, see the recent film
"Midnight Special" —
In memory of New Yorker artist Anatol Kovarsky,
who reportedly died at 97 on June 1.
Note the Santa, a figure associated with Macy's at Herald Square.
See also posts tagged Herald Square, as well as the following
figure from this journal on the day preceding Kovarsky's death.
A note related both to Galois space and to
the "Herald Square"-tagged posts —
"There is such a thing as a length-16 sequence."
— Saying adapted from a young-adult novel.
The search in the previous post for the source of a quotation from Poincaré yielded, as a serendipitous benefit, information on an interesting psychoanalyst named Wilfred Bion (see the Poincaré quotation at a webpage on Bion). This in turn suggested a search for the source of the name of author Madeleine L'Engle's son Bion, who may have partly inspired L'Engle's fictional character Charles Wallace. Cynthia Zarin wrote about Bion in The New Yorker of April 12, 2004 that
"According to the family, he is the person for whom L’Engle’s insistence on blurring fiction and reality had the most disastrous consequences."
Also from that article, material related to the name Bion and to what this journal has called "the Crosswicks Curse"*—
"Madeleine L’Engle Camp was born in 1918 in New York City, the only child of Madeleine Hall Barnett, of Jacksonville, Florida, and Charles Wadsworth Camp, a Princeton man and First World War veteran, whose family had a big country place in New Jersey, called Crosswicks. In Jacksonville society, the Barnett family was legendary: Madeleine’s grandfather, Bion Barnett, the chairman of the board of Jacksonville’s Barnett Bank, had run off with a woman to the South of France, leaving behind a note on the mantel. Her grandmother, Caroline Hallows L’Engle, never recovered from the blow. ….
… The summer after Hugh and Madeleine were married, they bought a dilapidated farmhouse in Goshen, in northwest Connecticut. Josephine, born in 1947, was three years old when they moved permanently to the house, which they called Crosswicks. Bion was born just over a year later."
* "There is such a thing as a tesseract."
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