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| Elements
of Geometry
The title of Euclid's Elements is, in Greek, Stoicheia.
From Lectures on the Science of Language, by Max Muller, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890, pp. 88-90 --
Stoicheia
"The question is, why were the elements, or the component primary parts of things, called stoicheia
by the Greeks? It is a word which has had a long history, and has
passed from Greece to almost every part of the civilized world, and
deserves, therefore, some attention at the hand of the etymological
genealogist.
Stoichos, from which stoicheion, means a row or file, like stix and stiches in Homer. The suffix eios is the same as the Latin eius, and expresses what belongs to or has the quality of something. Therefore, as stoichos means a row, stoicheion would be what belongs to or constitutes a row....
Hence stoichos presupposes a root stich, and this root would account in Greek for the following derivations:-- - stix, gen. stichos, a row, a line of soldiers
- stichos, a row, a line; distich, a couplet
- steicho, estichon, to march in order, step by step; to mount
- stoichos, a row, a file; stoichein, to march in a line
In German, the same root yields steigen, to step, to mount, and in Sanskrit we find stigh, to mount.... Stoicheia are the degrees or steps from one end to the other,
the constituent parts of a whole, forming a complete series, whether as
hours, or letters, or numbers, or parts of speech, or physical
elements, provided always that such elements are held together by a
systematic order."
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Related material:
"
... an alphabet
By which to spell out holy doom and end,
A bee for the remembering of happiness."
-- Wallace Stevens,
"The Owl in the Sarcophagus"
Some context for these figures:
The Diamond Theory of Truth
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New York State Lottery yesterday, Feb. 26, 2007: Mid-day 206
Evening 888
For more on the artistic
significance of 206,
see 2/06.
For more on the artistic
significance of 888, see
St. Bonaventure on the
Trinity at math16.com.
A trinity:
 Click on picture for further details. | | |
| Synaxis
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
Martin Scorsese won the best-director
Oscar last night for "The Departed."
From left, Francis Ford Coppola, Scorsese,
George Lucas and Steven
Spielberg.
"Synaxis ( synaxis from synago) means gathering, assembly, reunion. It is exactly equivalent to the Latin collecta (from colligere), and corresponds to synagogue ( synagoge), the place of reunion."
-- The Catholic Encyclopedia,
Volume XIV. Published 1912. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil
Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John
Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
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"I'm the only one who can
walk in both worlds.
I'm T. S. Eliot."
I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
Both one and many; in the brown baked features
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable.
So I assumed a double part, and cried
And heard another's voice cry: 'What! are you here?'
Although we were not. I was still the same,
Knowing myself yet being someone other—
And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
And so, compliant to the common wind,
Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
I may not comprehend, may not remember.'
And he: 'I am not eager to rehearse
My thoughts and theory which you have forgotten.
These things have served their purpose: let them be.
So with your own, and pray they be forgiven
By others, as I pray you to forgive
Both bad and good. Last season's fruit is eaten
And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of motives late revealed, and the awareness
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
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