"Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something
a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday...."

-- Bernard Holland in
   The New York Times
   Monday, May 20, 1996

Philadelphia Stories

As performed by
Princess Grace of Monaco

Women's History Month continues...
 

Ontology Alignment

   "He had with him a small red book of Mao's poems, and as he talked he
squared it on the table, aligned it with the table edge first
vertically and then horizontally.  To understand who Michael Laski
is you must have a feeling for that kind of compulsion."

   -- Joan Didion in the
       Saturday Evening Post,
       Nov. 18, 1967 (reprinted in
       Slouching Towards Bethlehem)

   "Or were you," I said.
    He said nothing.
   "Raised a Catholic," I said.
    He aligned a square crystal paperweight with the edge of his desk blotter.

   -- Joan Didion in
      The Last Thing He Wanted,
      Knopf, 1996

   "It was Plato who best expressed-- who veritably
embodied-- the tension between the narrative arts and mathematics....

   Plato clearly loved them both, both mathematics and poetry.  But he
approved of mathematics, and heartily, if conflictedly, disapproved of
poetry.  Engraved above the entrance to his Academy, the first European
university, was the admonition: Oudeis ageometretos eiseto.  Let none
ignorant of geometry enter.  This is an expression of high approval
indeed, and the symbolism could not have been more perfect, since
mathematics was, for Plato, the very gateway for all future knowledge. 
Mathematics ushers one into the realm of abstraction and universality,
grasped only through pure reason.  Mathematics is the threshold we cross
to pass into the ideal, the truly real."

   -- Rebecca Goldstein,
       Mathematics and
       the Character of Tragedy

Note: Carmichael's reference is to

A. Emch, "Triple and multiple systems, their geometric configurations and groups," Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 31 (1929), 25–42.

It turns out that Medawar (see previous entry) also wrote a deeply hostile review of Koestler's The Act of Creation.  (See Pluto's Republic.)

There are plenty more like Medawar, so it may be that a further effort at documentation of Diamond Theory is needed.  See this evening's entry, to follow.

"What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he
knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was
only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and
order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y
pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy
name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give
us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas
and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail
nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee."

A Living Church

A skeptic's remark:

"...the mind is an amazing thing and it can create patterns and
interconnections among things all day if you let it, regardless of whether
they are real connections."

-- Xanga blogger "sejanus"

A reply from G. K. Chesterton
(Log24, Jan. 18, 2004):

"Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has
startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with
any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still
living. To know that Plato might break out with an original lecture
to-morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything
with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes
to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and
Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some
truth that he has never seen before."

Rhinestone Cowboy

By GREG RISLING
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES -- Singer
Buck Owens, the flashy rhinestone cowboy who shaped the sound of
country music... died Saturday. He was 76.

From Log24, Feb. 2, 2003:

Head White House speechwriter Michael Gerson:

"In the last two weeks, I've been returning to
Hopkins.  Even in the 'world's wildfire,' he asserts that 'this Jack,
joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,/Is immortal
diamond.' A comfort."

-- Vanity Fair, May 2002, page 162

Related material:

See the five Log24 entries ending with The Diamond as Big as the Monster (Dec. 21, 2005).

Note particularly the following:

From Fitzgerald's
The Diamond as Big as the Ritz: