British author Peter Dickinson, who reportedly died yesterday,
Dec. 16, 2015, at 88, wrote the following (published in the UK
in 1975 and in the US in 1976) —
Inverted image of the above page —
See also, from the date of Dickinson's death, a post on
"A Fight for the Soul…" and a post on the symbol "S."
Of interest too are some remarks related to today's earlier post,
"Hint of Reality" …
From an article* in Proceedings of Bridges 2014 —
|
As artists, we are particularly interested in the symmetries of real world physical objects. Three natural questions arise: 1. Which groups can be represented as the group of symmetries of some real-world physical object? 2. Which groups have actually been represented as the group of symmetries of some real-world physical object? 3. Are there any glaring gaps – small, beautiful groups that should have a physical representation in a symmetric object but up until now have not? |
The article was cited by Evelyn Lamb in her Scientific American
weblog on May 19, 2014.
The above three questions from the article are relevant to a more
recent (Oct. 24, 2015) remark by Lamb:
"… finite projective planes [in particular, the 7-point Fano plane,
about which Lamb is writing] seem like a triumph of purely
axiomatic thinking over any hint of reality…."
For related hints of reality, see Eightfold Cube in this journal.
* "The Quaternion Group as a Symmetry Group," by Vi Hart and Henry Segerman
See pages 36 and 37 of Suzanne Gieser's The Innermost Kernel
as well as PyrE in The Stars My Destination and Old St. Patrick's*
in "Gangs of New York."
For some related aesthetic remarks, see a New Yorker essay
published onlne today and this journal's previous post.
* The older version of the "Old St. Patrick's"
of The Stars My Destination . (Update of 4/21/16.)
Meets the Kernel in the Nutshell.
This post was suggested by the title of Natalie Wolchover’s
article in Quanta Magazine today,
“A Fight for the Soul of Science.”
The post continues a meditation on the number 6
as the kernel in the nutshell of 15.
For an illustration of the 6 in the 15,
see nocciolo in this journal.
For an illustration of the jewel in the lotus,
see that phrase in this journal.
In memory of "a phenomenal merchandiser"
who reportedly died on Monday, Dec. 14, 2015:
Click on image for some backstory.
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