Log24

Monday, November 14, 2016

Flashback

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:12 am

See also Solomon Marcus in this journal.

"Look out, kid, they keep it all hid." — Bob Dylan

Friday, September 9, 2016

There IS such a thing …

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/APPLETS/29/NonSimple4E.gif

See also Dueling Formulas,  Sinner or Saint?,  and The Zero Obit.

Saturday, August 27, 2016

Folk Answer

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm

(A sequel to "Folk Question ," the previous post)

Midnight Bingo

It All Adds Up.

See also Alexandra Bellow's "Flashbacks of a Mathematical Life
in the September 2016 Notices of the American Mathematical Society .

Folk Question

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:25 pm

A figure from Dec. 27, 2003

Quoted here on that date

“If little else, the brain is an educational toy."

— Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

"What else did you get for Christmas?"

— Folk question

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Dueling Formulas

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 12:00 am

Jung's four-diamond formula vs. Levi-Strauss's 'canonical formula'

Note the echo of Jung's formula in the diamond theorem.

An attempt by Lévi-Strauss to defend his  formula —

"… reducing the life of the mind to an abstract game . . . ." —

For a fictional version of such a game, see Das Glasperlenspiel .

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Bullshit Studies

The originator of the phrase 'Fab Four' reportedly
died at 80 on Saturday, May 14, 2016.

This suggests a review of another noted four-set.

The above image is from a study of Lévi-Strauss's "Canonical Formula"

Midrash —

Log24 post titled 'As Is'

[Above photo of Lévi-Strauss and formula added June 6, 2016.]

Sunday, May 8, 2016

The Three Solomons

Earlier posts have dealt with Solomon Marcus and Solomon Golomb,
both of whom died this year — Marcus on Saint Patrick's Day, and
Golomb on Orthodox Easter Sunday. This suggests a review of
Solomon LeWitt, who died on Catholic Easter Sunday, 2007.

A quote from LeWitt indicates the depth of the word "conceptual"
in his approach to "conceptual art."

From Sol LeWitt: A Retrospective , edited by Gary Garrels, Yale University Press, 2000, p. 376:

 

THE SQUARE AND THE CUBE
by Sol LeWitt

"The best that can be said for either the square or the cube is that they are relatively uninteresting in themselves. Being basic representations of two- and three-dimensional form, they lack the expressive force of other more interesting forms and shapes. They are standard and universally recognized, no initiation being required of the viewer; it is immediately evident that a square is a square and a cube a cube. Released from the necessity of being significant in themselves, they can be better used as grammatical devices from which the work may proceed."

"Reprinted from Lucy R. Lippard et al ., “Homage to the Square,” Art in America  55, No. 4 (July-August 1967): 54. (LeWitt’s contribution was originally untitled.)"

See also the Cullinane models of some small Galois spaces

Some small Galois spaces (the Cullinane models)

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Slow Art

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:45 pm

(Continued)

The American Mathematical Society today got around to
publishing an obituary for Solomon Marcus, a Bucharest
mathematician who died on St. Patrick's Day, March 17.

See as well this  journal on March 22.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

The Zero Obit

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 pm

From St. Patrick's Day 2016 —

Solomon Marcus obituary

See also posts mentioning
Terry Gilliam's film "The Zero Theorem."

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Sinner or Saint?

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:31 am

As noted here yesterday, Claude Levi-Strauss may have died on Devil's Night, on Halloween, or on All Saints' Day. He was apparently a myth-transformer to the end.

The Independent says today he died on Sunday, All Saints' Day. Its eulogy, by Adam Kuper, is well-written, noting that linguist Roman Jakobson was a source of Levi-Strauss's theory of oppositions in myth, and observing that

"… binary oppositions tend to accumulate to form structures…."

Yes, they do. Examples:

I. The structures in the Diamond Puzzle

Adam and God (Sistine Chapel), with Jungian Self-Symbol and Ojo de Dios (The Diamond Puzzle)

Click on image for Jungian background.

II: The structure on a recent cover of Semiotica

http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/091103-SemioticaSm.jpg

Click to enlarge.

The Semiotica article by mathematical linguist Solomon Marcus is a defense of the Levi-Strauss canonic formula mentioned here yesterday.

It is available online for $40.

A less expensive, and possibly more informative, look at oppositions in linguistics is available for free online in a 1984 master's thesis (pdf, 8+ mb)–

"Language, Linguistics, and Philosophy: A Comparison of the Work of Roman Jakobson and the Later Wittgenstein, with Some Attention to the Philosophy of Charles Saunders Peirce," by Miles Spencer Kimball.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Summa Mythologica

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

Book review by Jadran Mimica in Oceania, Vol. 74, 2003:

"In his classic essay of 1955 'The Structural Study of Myth' Levi-Strauss came up with a universal formula of mythopeic dynamics

[fx(a) : fy(b) :: fx(b) : fa-1(y)]

that he called canonical 'for it can represent any mythic transformation'. This formulation received its consummation in the four massive Mythologiques volumes, the last of which crystallises the fundamental dialectics of mythopoeic thought: that there is 'one myth only' and the primal ground of this 'one' is 'nothing'. The elucidation of the generative matrix of the myth-work is thus completed as is the self-totalisation of both the thinker and his object."

So there.

At least one mathematician has claimed that the Levi-Strauss formula makes sense. (Jack Morava, arXiv pdf, 2003.)

I prefer the earlier (1943) remarks of Hermann Hesse on transformations of myth:

"…in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created."

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