July 13, 2007
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Object Lesson, continued:
Today’s birthday:Harrison Ford is 65.
“Three times the concentred
self takes hold, three times
The thrice concentred self,
having possessed
The object, grips it
in savage scrutiny,
Once to make captive,
once to subjugate
Or yield to subjugation,
once to proclaim
The meaning of the capture,
this hard prize,
Fully made, fully apparent,
fully found.”– “Credences of Summer,” VII,
by Wallace Stevens, from
Transport to Summer (1947)“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 TragedyRelated material:Previous entry,
entries of July 1, 2007,
and A Little Story
(9/30/06)
