April 28, 2005
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Black Moses
For an explanation of the title, see
the previous entry and
Robert P. Moses and The Algebra Project.For another algebra project, see
Log24 entries of April 14-25 as well as
the following “X in a box” figure
from March 10, 2005 and
April 5, 2005.Those interested in artistic rather than mathematical figures may compare this diagram with that of Samuel Beckett in Quad (1981):
Related quotations:Barry Mazur on a seminal paper of algebraist Saunders Mac Lane:
The paper was rejected “because the editor thought that it was ‘more
devoid of content’ than any other he had read. ‘Saunders wrote
back and said, “That’s the point,”‘ Mazur said. ‘And in some ways
that’s the genius of it. It’s the barest, most Beckett-like vocabulary
that incorporates the theory and nothing else.’”
J. Peter May, a professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago quoted in the Chicago Tribune:“There are some ideas you simply could not think without a vocabulary to think
them.”Amen.
