Log24

Friday, September 18, 2020

Adoration of the Cube

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:25 am

“WHEN I IMAGINE THE CUBE, I see a structure in motion.
I see the framework of its edges, its corners, and its flexible joints,
and the continuous transformations in front of me (before you start
to worry, I assure you that I can freeze it anytime I like). I don’t see
a static object but a system of dynamic relations. In fact, this is only
half of that system. The other half is the person who handles it.
Just like everything else in our world, a system is defined by
its place
within a network of relations—to humans, first of all.”

— Rubik, Erno.  Cubed   (p. 165). Flatiron Books. Kindle Ed., 2020.

Compare and contrast — Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Structure and Mutability . . .

Continues in The New York Times :

"One day — 'I don’t know exactly why,' he writes — he tried to
put together eight cubes so that they could stick together but
also move around, exchanging places. He made the cubes out
of wood, then drilled a hole in the corners of the cubes to link
them together. The object quickly fell apart.

Many iterations later, Rubik figured out the unique design
that allowed him to build something paradoxical:
a solid, static object that is also fluid…." — Alexandra Alter

Another such object: the eightfold cube .

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Deep Space Odyssey

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:32 pm

From a search for Maniac in this journal

Related meditations —

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Icelandic Fantasy

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 2:08 pm

"In the fantasy, Owen is still working on his Rubik’s Cube.
Finally, he finishes — he’s put together all 6 sides."

— "Maniac" Season 1, Episode 9 recap: ‘Utangatta’
      by Cynthia Vinney at showsnob.com, Oct. 9, 2018

Related material —

See also Exploded in this journal.

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

An Illusion of Brilliance

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 5:25 pm

” . . . the 3 by 3, the six-sided, three-layer configuration of
the original Rubik’s Cube, which bestows an illusion of brilliance
on those who can solve it.”

— John Branch in the online New York Times  today,
“Children of the Cube”:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/sports/
cubing-usa-nationals-max-park.html

Cube-solving, like other sports, allows for displays of
impressive and admirable skill, if not “brilliance.”

The mathematics — group theory — that is sometimes associated
with Rubik’s Cube is, however, not  a sport.  See Rubik + Group
in this journal.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix18/180815-Alperin-Bell-preface-1995.gif

Saturday, March 31, 2018

Illusion

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:56 pm

“The greatest obstacle to discovery
is not ignorance —
it is the illusion of knowledge.”

— Daniel J. Boorstin,
Librarian of Congress,
quoted here in 2006.

Related material —

Remarks on Rubik's Cube from June 13, 2014 and . . .

See as well a different Gresham, author of Nightmare Alley ,
and Log24 posts on that book and the film of the same name .

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Rubik vs. Galois: Preconception vs. Pre-conception

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:20 pm

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
a prelude to action and itself a kind of action;
the meeting of psycho-analyst and analysand
is itself an example of this language.29.

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
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have ever been.31.

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 .

Monday, February 9, 2015

Escape Clause

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:24 pm

For Jews of Hungarian background
who do not  worship Paul Erdős and
Rubik’s Cube:

The Great Escape.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Educational Series

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:01 pm

Barron's Educational Series (click to enlarge):

The Tablet of Ahkmenrah:

IMAGE- The Tablet of Ahkmenrah, from 'Night at the Museum'

 "With the Tablet of Ahkmenrah and the Cube of Rubik,
my power will know no bounds!"
— Kahmunrah in a novelization of Night at the Museum:
Battle of the Smithsonian , Barron's Educational Series

Another educational series (this journal):

Image-- Rosalind Krauss and The Ninefold Square

Art theorist Rosalind Krauss and The Ninefold Square

IMAGE- Elementary Galois Geometry over GF(3)

Friday, June 13, 2014

It’s 10 PM

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 10:00 pm

"The wind of change is blowing throughout the continent.
Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness
is a political fact."— Prime Minister Harold Macmillan,
South Africa, 1960

"Lord knows when the cold wind blows
it'll turn your head around." — James Taylor

From a Log24 post of August 27, 2011:

IMAGE- 'Group Theory' Wikipedia article with Rubik's cube as main illustration and argument by a cuber for the image's use

For related remarks on "national consciousness," see Frantz Fanon.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Rubik Quote

“The Cube was born in 1974 as a teaching tool
to help me and my students better understand
space and 3D. The Cube challenged us to find
order in chaos."

— Professor Ernő Rubik at Chrome Cube Lab

For a Chinese approach to order and chaos,
see I Ching  Cube in this journal.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Core

Promotional description of a new book:

"Like Gödel, Escher, Bach  before it, Surfaces and Essences  will profoundly enrich our understanding of our own minds. By plunging the reader into an extraordinary variety of colorful situations involving language, thought, and memory, by revealing bit by bit the constantly churning cognitive mechanisms normally completely hidden from view, and by discovering in them one central, invariant core— the incessant, unconscious quest for strong analogical links to past experiences— this book puts forth a radical and deeply surprising new vision of the act of thinking."

"Like Gödel, Escher, Bach  before it…."

Or like Metamagical Themas .

Rubik core:

Swarthmore Cube Project, 2008

Non- Rubik cores:

Of the odd  nxnxn cube:

 

Of the even  nxnxn cube:

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/cube2x2x2.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Related material: The Eightfold Cube and

"A core component in the construction
is a 3-dimensional vector space  over F."

—  Page 29 of "A twist in the M24 moonshine story,"
by Anne Taormina and Katrin Wendland.
(Submitted to the arXiv on 13 Mar 2013.)

Friday, September 9, 2011

Galois vs. Rubik

(Continued from Abel Prize, August 26)

IMAGE- Elementary Galois Geometry over GF(3)

The situation is rather different when the
underlying Galois field has two rather than
three elements… See Galois Geometry.

Image-- Sugar cube in coffee, from 'Bleu'

The coffee scene from "Bleu"

Related material from this journal:

The Dream of
the Expanded Field

Image-- 4x4 square and 4x4x4 cube

Sunday, August 28, 2011

The Cosmic Part

Yesterday's midday post, borrowing a phrase from the theology of Marvel Comics,
offered Rubik's mechanical contrivance as a rather absurd "Cosmic Cube."

A simpler candidate for the "Cube" part of that phrase:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10/100214-Cube2x2x2.gif

The Eightfold Cube

As noted elsewhere, a simple reflection group* of order 168 acts naturally on this structure.

"Because of their truly fundamental role in mathematics,
even the simplest diagrams concerning finite reflection groups
(or finite mirror systems, or root systems—
the languages are equivalent) have interpretations
of cosmological proportions."

Alexandre V. Borovik in "Coxeter Theory: The Cognitive Aspects"

Borovik has a such a diagram—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110828-BorovikM.jpg

The planes in Borovik's figure are those separating the parts of the eightfold cube above.

In Coxeter theory, these are Euclidean hyperplanes. In the eightfold cube, they represent three of seven projective points that are permuted by the above group of order 168.

In light of Borovik's remarks, the eightfold cube might serve to illustrate the "Cosmic" part of the Marvel Comics phrase.

For some related theological remarks, see Cube Trinity in this journal.

Happy St. Augustine's Day.

* I.e., one generated by reflections : group actions that fix a hyperplane pointwise. In the eightfold cube, viewed as a vector space of 3 dimensions over the 2-element Galois field, these hyperplanes are certain sets of four subcubes.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

On Art and Magic

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:30 pm

Two Blocks Short of a Design:

A sequel to this morning’s post on Douglas Hofstadter

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-ThemeAndVariations-Hofstadter.jpg

Photo of Hofstadter by Mike McGrath taken May 13, 2006

Related material — See Lyche’s  “Theme and Variations” in this journal
and Hofstadter’s “Variations on a Theme as the Essence of Imagination
Scientific American  October 1982

A quotation from a 1985 book by Hofstadter—

“… we need to entice people with the beauties of clarity, simplicity, precision,
elegance, balance, symmetry, and so on.

Those artistic qualities… are the things that I have tried to explore and even
to celebrate in Metamagical Themas .  (It is not for nothing that the word
‘magic’ appears inside the title!)”

The artistic qualities Hofstadter lists are best sought in mathematics, not in magic.

An example from Wikipedia —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-BlockDesignTheory.jpg

Mathematics

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-WikipediaFanoPlane.jpg

The Fano plane block design

Magic

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-DeathlyHallows.jpg

The Deathly Hallows  symbol—
Two blocks short of  a design.

Beyond Forgetfulness

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

From this journal on July 23, 2007

It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit
,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

– Wallace Stevens, "The Rock"

This quotation from Stevens (Harvard class of 1901) was posted here on when Daniel Radcliffe (i.e., Harry Potter) turned 18 in July 2007.

Other material from that post suggests it is time for a review of magic at Harvard.

On September 9, 2007, President Faust of Harvard

"encouraged the incoming class to explore Harvard’s many opportunities.

'Think of it as a treasure room of hidden objects Harry discovers at Hogwarts,' Faust said."

That class is now about to graduate.

It is not clear what "hidden objects" it will take from four years in the Harvard treasure room.

Perhaps the following from a book published in 1985 will help…

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-MetamagicalIntro.gif

The March 8, 2011, Harvard Crimson  illustrates a central topic of Metamagical Themas , the Rubik's Cube—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110427-CrimsonAtlas300w.jpg

Hofstadter in 1985 offered a similar picture—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-RubikGlobe.gif

Hofstadter asks in his Metamagical  introduction, "How can both Rubik's Cube and nuclear Armageddon be discussed at equal length in one book by one author?"

For a different approach to such a discussion, see Paradigms Lost, a post made here a few hours before the March 11, 2011, Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110427-ParadigmsLost.jpg

Whether Paradigms Lost is beyond forgetfulness is open to question.

Perhaps a later post, in the lighthearted spirit of Faust, will help. See April 20th's "Ready When You Are, C.B."

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