Trinity
On this date in 1963...
all died.
On the bright side:
On this date, Tarzan (John Clayton III, the future Lord Greystoke) was born and Ravel's "Bolero" was first performed.
In memory of Arthur T. Winfree:
Time, Eternity, and Grace
Professor Arthur T. Winfree died on November 5, 2002.
He was the author of "The Geometry of Biological Time."
"I've always been enthralled by the notion that Time is an illusion, a trick our minds play in an attempt to keep things separate, without any reality of its own. My experience suggests that this is literally true...."
"Time disappears with Tequila.
It goes elastic, then vanishes."
(Nobel Prize lecture):
"All time, past or future, real or imaginary, was pure presence."
"He just wanted to get to the truth."
"Gracias."
Pray
This brief heading echoes the title of the latest novel by Michael Crichton, perhaps the best-known member of the Harvard College class of 1964. In honor of that class and of Q (see the preceding entry), here is a condensed excerpt from a passage of Plato quoted by Q:
Socrates. 'Should we not, before going, offer up a prayer to these local deities?’
'By all means,’ Phaedrus agrees.
Socrates (praying): ‘Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, grant me beauty in the inward soul, and that the outward and inward may be at one!....
That prayer, I think, is enough for me.’
Phaedrus. ‘Ask the same for me, Socrates. Friends, methinks, should have all things in common.’
Socrates. ‘So be it…. Let us go.’
In accordance with this prayer, and with the coming of summer to Australia, that land beloved of Pan, this site's music now returns to the theme introduced in my note of September 10, 2002, "The Sound of Hanging Rock."
Hope of Heaven
This title is taken from a John O'Hara novel I like very much. It seems appropriate because today is the birthday of three admirable public figures:
"No one can top Eleanor Powell - not even Fred Astaire." -- A fellow professional. Reportedly, "Astaire himself said she was better than him."
That's as good as it gets.
Let us hope that Powell, Hawkins, and Q are enjoying a place that Q, quoting Plato's Phaedrus, described as follows:
"a fair resting-place, full of summer sounds and scents!"
This is a rather different, and more pleasant, approach to the Phaedrus than the one most familiar to later generations -- that of Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. Both approaches, however, display what Pirsig calls "Quality."
One of my own generation's closest approaches to Quality is found in the 25th Anniversary Report of the Harvard Class of 1964. Charles Small remarks,
"A lot of other stuff has gone down the drain since 1964, of course, besides my giving up being a mathematician and settling into my first retirement. My love-hate relationship with the language has intensified, and my despair with words as instruments of communion is often near total. I read a little, but not systematically. I've always been enthralled by the notion that Time is an illusion, a trick our minds play in an attempt to keep things separate, without any reality of its own. My experience suggests that this is literally true, but not the kind of truth that can be acted upon....
I'm always sad and always happy. As someone says in Diane Keaton's film 'Heaven,' 'It's kind of a lost cause, but it's a great experience.'"
I agree. Here are two links to some work of what is apparently this same Charles Small:
Back Again
Sorry for the hiatus in weblog entries since November 9. There were two reasons for this...
Birthdate of Hermann Weyl
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Result of a Google search.
Category: Science > Math > Algebra > Group Theory
Weyl, H.: Symmetry. | Sponsored Link Symmetry Puzzle |
Quotation from Weyl's Symmetry:
"Symmetry is a vast subject, significant in art and nature. Mathematics lies at its root, and it would be hard to find a better one on which to demonstrate the working of the mathematical intellect."
In honor of Princeton University, of Sylvia Nasar (see entries of Nov, 6), of the Presbyterian Church (see entry of Nov. 8), and of Professor Weyl (whose work partly inspired the website Diamond Theory), this site's background music is now Pink Floyd's
You Crazy Diamond." |
Updates of Friday, November 15, 2002:
In order to clarify the meaning of "Shine" and "Crazy" in the above, consult the following --
To accompany this detailed exegesis of Pink Floyd, click here for a reading by Marlon Brando.
For a related educational experience, see pages 126-127 of The Book of Sequels, by Henry Beard, Christopher Cerf, Sarah Durkee, and Sean Kelly (Random House paperback, 1990).
Speaking of sequels, be on the lookout for Annie Dillard's sequel to Teaching a Stone to Talk, titled Teaching a Brick to Sing.
Religious Symbolism
at Princeton
In memory of Steve McQueen ("The Great Escape" and "The Thomas Crown Affair"... see preceding entry) and of Rudolf Augstein (publisher of Der Spiegel), both of whom died on November 7 (in 1980 and 2002, respectively), in memory of the following residents of
The Princeton Cemetery
of the Nassau Presbyterian Church
Established 1757
SYLVIA BEACH (1887-1962), whose father was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, founded Shakespeare & Company, a Paris bookshop which became a focus for struggling expatriate writers. In 1922 she published James Joyce's Ulysses when others considered it obscene, and she defiantly closed her shop in 1941 in protest against the Nazi occupation. KURT GÖDEL (1906-1978), a world-class mathematician famous for a vast array of major contributions to logic, was a longtime professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, founded in 1930. He was a corecipient of the Einstein Award in 1951. JOHN (HENRY) O'HARA (1905-1970) was a voluminous and much-honored writer. His novels, Appointment in Samarra (1934) and Ten North Frederick (1955), and his collection of short stories, Pal Joey (1940), are among his best-known works. |
and of the long and powerful association of Princeton University with the Presbyterian Church, as well as the theological perspective of Carl Jung in Man and His Symbols, I offer the following "windmill," taken from the Presbyterian Creedal Standards website, as a memorial:
The background music Les Moulins de Mon Coeur, selected yesterday morning in memory of Steve McQueen, continues to be appropriate.
"A is for Anna."
-- James Joyce
16 Years Ago Today:
Endgame
Metaphor for Morphean morphosis,
Dreams that wake, transform, and die,
Calm and lucid this psychosis,
Joyce's nightmare in Escher's eye.
At the end there is a city
With cathedral bright and sane
Facing inward from the pity
On the endgame's wavy plane.
Black the knight upon that ocean,
Bright the sun upon the king.
Dark the queen that stands beside him,
White his castle, threatening.
In the shadows' see a bishop
Guards his queen of love and hate.
Another move, the game will be up;
Take the queen, her knight will mate.
The knight said "Move, be done. It's over."
"Love and resign," the bishop cried.
"When it's done you'll stand forever
By the darkest beauty's side."
Dabo claves regni caelorum. By silent shore
Ripples spread from castle rock. The metaphor
For metamorphosis no keys unlock.
-- Steven H. Cullinane, November 7, 1986
Accompaniment from
"The Thomas Crown Affair":
Michel Legrand, "Les Moulins de Mon Coeur"
Lyrics by Eddy Marnay:
Comme une pierre que l'on jette
Dans l'eau vive d'un ruisseau
Et qui laisse derrière elle
Des milliers de ronds dans l'eau....
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