"The history of topology dates back at least to the middle of the 18th century. One of its first major boosts came at the end of the 19th century, when Poincare was trying to understand the set of solutions to a general algebraic equation...."
-- T. S. Eliot
| Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" |
| Let us go and make our visit.
-- T. S. Eliot
|
| On Tuesday evening, the schedule says "Prof. Yau present his new research result," which presumably will be about the proof of the Poincare conjecture. |
| Would it have been worth while, |
| To have bitten off the matter with a smile, |
| To have squeezed the universe into a ball |
| To roll it toward some overwhelming question.... -- T. S. Eliot
|
|
Yau rated the conjecture as one of the major mathematical puzzles of the 20th Century. |
Snippets:
A Reply to John Updike
See Updike on digitized snippets.
The following four snippets were pirated from the end of MathPages Quotations, compiled by Kevin Brown.
They are of synchronistic interest in view of the previous two Log24
entries, which referred (implicitly) to a Poe story and (explicitly) to
Pascal.
"That is another of your odd notions,"
said the Prefect, who had the fashion
of calling everything 'odd' that was
beyond his comprehension, and thus
lived amid an absolute legion of 'oddities.'
Edgar Allan Poe
I knew when seven justices could not
take up a quarrel, but when the parties
were met themselves, one of them
thought but of an If, as, 'If you said so,
then I said so'; and they shook hands
and swore brothers. Your If is the only
peacemaker; much virtue in If.
Shakespeare
I have made this letter longer than usual
because I lack the time to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
S'io credessi che mia risposta fosse
a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma per cio che giammai di questo fondo
non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.
Dante, 1302
For translations of the Dante (including one by Dorothy Sayers), see everything2.com.
An anonymous author there notes that Dante describes a flame in
which is encased a damned soul. The flame vibrates as the soul speaks:
If I thought that I were making
Answer to one that might return to view
The world, this flame should evermore
cease shaking.
But since from this abyss, if I hear true,
None ever came alive, I have no fear
Of infamy, but give thee answer due.
-- Dante, Inferno, Canto 27, lines 61-66,
translated by Dorothy Sayers
"Yes, there is a ton of information on the web but much of it is grievously
inaccurate, unedited, unattributed and juvenile. The electronic marvels that
abound around us serve, I have the impression, to inflame what is most
informally and non-critically human about us. Our computer screens stare back at
us with a kind of giant, instant aw-shucks, disarming in its modesty."
Note Updike's use of "inflame."
For an aw-shucks version of "what is most informally and
non-critically human about us," as well as a theological flame, see
both the previous entry and the above report from Hell.
Note that the web serves also to correct material that is inaccurate, unedited, unattributed, and juvenile. For examples, see Mathematics and Narrative. The combination of today's entry for Pascal's birthday with that web page serves both to light one candle and to curse the darkness.
"He spent his earliest years in post WWII--refugee camps. He came to
America and grew up in Cleveland--stealing cars, rolling drunks,
battling priests, nearly going to jail. He became the screenwriter of
the worldwide hits Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, and Flashdance. He also
wrote the legendary disasters Showgirls and Jade. The rebellion never
ended, even as his films went on to gross more than a billion dollars
at the box office and he became the most famous--or
infamous--screenwriter in Hollywood. Joe Eszterhas is a complex and
paradoxical figure: part outlaw and outsider combined with equal parts
romantic and moralist. More than one person has called him 'the devil.'
He has been referred to as 'the most reviled man in America.' But Time
asked, 'If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?'"
-- Random House promotional material
"Yea, though I walk
through the valley of death
I will fear no evil,
for I am the meanest
son of a bitch
in the valley."
in The Silver Crown,
by Joel Rosenberg
Part I:
The Game
Part II:
Many People
For further details,
see Solomon's Cube
and myspace.com/affine.
"The rock cannot be broken.
It is the truth."
-- Wallace Stevens
For Bloomsday 2006:
Hero of His Own Story
"The philosophic college should spare a detective for me."
-- Stephen Hero. Epigraph to Chapter 2, "Dedalus and the Beauty Maze," in Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, S. J., Yale University Press, 1957 (in the Yale paperback edition of 1963, page 18)
"Dorothy Sayers makes a great deal of sense when she points out in her highly instructive and readable book The Mind of the Maker
that 'to complain that man measures God by his own measure is a waste
of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other
yardstick.'"
-- William T. Noon, S. J., Joyce and Aquinas (in the Yale paperback edition of 1963, page 106)
Related material:
"The
mathematics of tilings and quilting play background roles in this
mystery in which a graduate student attempts to write a biography of
the (fictitious) mathematician Gideon Summerfield. Summerfield is about
to posthumously receive the prestigious (and, I should point out, also
fictitious) Waymark Prize in mathematics...but it soon becomes clear
that someone with evil intentions does not want the student's book to
be published!
By all accounts this is a well written
mystery...the second by the author with college nurse Imogen Quy
playing the role of the detective."
-- Mathematical Fiction by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston
Baez Link
John Baez's latest This Week's Finds
(Week 234, June 12, 2006) has a link
to my "Geometry of the 4x4 Square" at
http://finitegeometry.org/sc/16/geometry.html.
On the Brighter Side...
At 8 EDT tonight on CBS:
The American Film Institute's
100 most inspiring American films.
For the list of 300 films on
the AFI ballot sent to voters,
click here (pdf, 772k).
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