tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post6267582915347352524..comments2024-03-27T06:25:29.002-05:00Comments on Anecdotal Evidence: `The Poetry of Mathematics'Patrick Kurphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08436175583386298032noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-65442682169398008032012-03-26T20:16:22.748-05:002012-03-26T20:16:22.748-05:00On encountering Cantor's proof of the "no...On encountering Cantor's proof of the "nondenumerability of the continuum" in a college math course, I felt a certain vindication, for at some point in middle or high school I had been told that No, real numbers are not more infinite than the integers. (I think that I may have suggested that they were "thicker.") However, I must say that I wasn't entirely vindicated, for I would not have dreamed of Cantor's demonstration of the denumerability of the rationals (ratios of two integers.) The book <i>Journey Through Genius</i> gives a good treatment of Cantor's two famous results.Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-88656308269978864892012-03-26T09:56:06.218-05:002012-03-26T09:56:06.218-05:00Johann Sebastian Bach created the most sublimely b...Johann Sebastian Bach created the most sublimely beautiful Infinite Class of math and music and poetry.<br /><br />TJGAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-81734334646632963362012-03-26T09:43:01.597-05:002012-03-26T09:43:01.597-05:00I died for poetry, but scarce
Adjusted in the tomb...I died for poetry, but scarce<br />Adjusted in the tomb,<br />When one dead for mathematics spread<br />In an adjoining room...<br /><br />I remember, age 14 or so, the excitement of being handed a book, by my older cousin, the first in our family to be published. Unfortunately, there were few words in it – it consisted almost entirely of the stochastic formulas of a mathematics professor, indecipherable to his proud family. I suppose the way I felt then is the way most people feel now when they’re handed a book of poetry: the sublime promise, kept secret in an occult code.<br /><br />Metaphors, grammar and phonetics (not to mention complex rhyme and metric poetic schemes) all have mathematical consonances, and the beauty of both poetry and mathematics is in expressing the most that can be said in the most concise possible way, with nothing left over. Many have tried to combine math and poetry, but the result is usually not multiplication but division, not non-Euclidean decadents and topological surrealists but mathematicians who wrote poetry (Roubard, Masheroni, Barbu) or poets who practiced mathematics (Goethe, Empson, Parra). The one notable exception to this of course is the Iranian Omar Khayyam, who in addition to explaining the principles of algebra, solving cubic equations, inventing Pascal’s triangle, and inspiring non-Euclidean geometry, formulated the famous poetic equation “A loaf of bread+ a jug of wine+ thou =x” (where x is the unnamable). <br /><br />There’s a whole fascinating blog devoted to the <a href="http://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">intersections between poetry and mathematics"</a>. In one <a href="http://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.com/2010/04/poetry-and-mathematics-similarities.html" rel="nofollow">post</a>, the reader is given a variety of quotes and asked to select poetry or mathematics to fill in the blank (condensed here): <br /><br />1. A thorough advocate in a just cause, a penetrating ______ facing the starry heavens, both alike bear the semblance of divinity. <br /><br />2. When you read and understand ______, comprehending its reach and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.<br /><br />3. All ______ [is] putting the infinite within the finite. <br /><br />4. _________ is pure play, with pre-suppositions <br /><br /><i>Answers: 1 – mathematician (Goethe); 2 – poetry (Stephen Spender); 3 – poetry (Robert Browning); mathematics (George Santayana)</i><br /><br />The blog owner, Joanne Growney, selects Carl Sandburg’s <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/14051" rel="nofollow"> “Number Man”</a> as her favorite poem about mathematics, a judgment with which I concur:<br /><br />“…He knew love numbers, luck numbers,<br />how the sea and the stars<br />are made and held by numbers.<br /><br />“He died from the wonder of numbering.<br />He said good-by as if good-by is a number.”WAShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10403669322174979974noreply@blogger.com