May 3, 2006

  • Ontology Alignment
    continued

    "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

    Pennsylvania Lottery:

    The winning numbers
    for Tuesday, May 2--
    the feast of
    St. Athanasius:

    Mid-day 703
    Evening 462

    "You gotta be true to your code"
    -- Sinatra (see previous entry)

     Dewey Decimal Code:

    703 The Arts:
           Dictionaries &
           Encyclopedias
    462 Spanish Etymology


    Related material:

    For the arts, see
    the previous entry.
    For Spanish etymology,
    see the remarks on
    a Spanish word in
    Plato, Pegasus, and
    the Evening Star,
    a note linked to in the
    April 30 memorial entry
    for John Kenneth Galbraith.

    The numbers 703 and 462 are, in Goldstein's phrase, "truly real." 
    However, their link to St. Athanasius and to the Spanish language is,
    as purveyors of fiction* say, "purely coincidental"-- as is much of what
    makes life interesting.

    "All persons living and dead are purely coincidental...."-- Kurt Vonnegut, epigraph to Bagombo Snuff Box

    * For instance,
       David Auburn in Proof,

       The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix06A/060503-DrLecter2.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

       which also involves
       Dewey decimal numbers