May 25, 2005

• The Turning

  Readers who have an Amazon.com account may view book pages relevant to the previous entry.  See page 77
  of The Way We Think, by Fauconnier and Turner (Amazon search term = Meno).  This page
  discusses both the Pythagorean theorem and Plato’s diamond figure in
  the Meno, but fails to “blend” these two topics.  See also page 53
  of The History of Mathematics, by Roger Cooke (first edition), where these two topics
  are in fact blended (Amazon search term = Pythagorean).  The illustration below is drawn from the
  Cooke book.

  

  Cooke demonstrates how the Pythagorean theorem might have been derived by “blending” Plato’s diamond (left) with the idea of moving the diamond’s corners (right).

  The previous entry dealt with a conference on mathematics and
  narrative.  Above is an example I like of mathematics…. Here is
  an example I like of narrative:

  Kate felt quite dizzy. She didn't know exactly what it was
  that had just happened, but she felt pretty damn  certain  that
  it  was  the  sort of experience that her mother would not have
  approved of on a first date.
       "Is this all part of what we have to do to go to  Asgard?"
  she said. "Or are you just fooling around?"
       "We will go to Asgard...now," he said.
       At that moment he raised his hand as if to pluck an apple,
  but instead of plucking he made a tiny, sharp turning movement.
  The effect  was as if he had twisted the entire world through a
  billionth part of a billionth  part  of  a  degree.  Everything
  shifted,  was  for  a  moment  minutely  out of focus, and then
  snapped back again as a suddenly different world.

  – Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

  And here is a blend of the concepts “Asgard” and “conference”:
  
  “Asgard
      During the Interuniverse
  Society conference,
      a bridge was opened to Valhalla….”

   
  Bifrost
       In Norse myth, the rainbow bridge
       that connected Earth to Asgard,
       home of
  the gods.  It was extended
       to Tellus
  Tertius during the
       Interuniverse
  Society conference”

  – From A Heinlein Concordance

  

  – Front page picture from a
  local morning newspaper published
  today, Wednesday, May 25, 2005

  As George Balanchine once asked,
  “How much story do you want?”

  • 2:22 pm
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