[ExI] imaginary numbers: RE: new entry from symphony of science

Darren Greer darren.greer3 at gmail.com
Sun Nov 28 15:45:46 UTC 2010


John wrote:

> . . .Benjamin Peirce was the most important teacher of mathematics at
Harvard in the 19'th century, after deriving that equation he turned to his
students and said: "Gentlemen that is surely true, it is paradoxical; we
cannot understand it and we don't know what it means. But we have proven it,
and therefore we know it must be the truth."<

That's the crux of it isn't it? I was sitting in class last week and I got
very excited over a proof for a formula we were studying. As a writer, when
you're working on something good and all is going well, there is this
emotive and intellectual click that takes place that tells you that what you
are writing is true, not in any literally sense, but in some fundamental
way, that you are somehow capturing in those few minute what Henry James
called the very "trick and note of life."  Some writers call it 'the zone'
for lack of any better description. The same zone is available in
mathematics, and perhaps in any rigorously applied intellectual discipline.
We can often recognize the truth when we see it or work our way into it,
whether we understand how we got there or not. I was watching a discussion
on the 'net the other night between the Four Horsemen -- Hitchins, Dawkins,
Harris and Dennett, and Hitchins and Harris made a similar point: that this
feeling that I like to think of transcendence is available to anyone who
wants to seek it by applying intellectual rigor to a field of discipline
relying on what is observable and attainable through logic and rationale.


Hate to turn this topic towards religion, but it has been on my mind a lot
lately because of my studies. Religion denies people this transcendence in
any real sense, for it asks them to look for it outside of what is
verifiable and factual and offers them specious truths and demands belief in
the supernatural. In return it asks its followers to abandon their own moral
sense and intellectual self-sufficiency and to believe in miracles, which is
to deny the real miracle, which is to live in a universe where an imaginary
number has real world applications and light can be refracted by the warping
of space-time.

I have discovered in myself a genuine affinity for science and mathematics
at the age of 42. God knows what this will do to my writing. I write novels
about real people in contemporary society where science is often edited out
of the equation. This group is one reason I decided to go back to school and
educate myself, but another is that I don't think any writer can afford to
ignore the truths of science and mathematics any longer and try to giver an
accurate picture of contemporary society.

Don't know where this sudden introspection came from. Math? Why not?

Darren







2010/11/28 John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>

> On Nov 26, 2010, at 9:06 PM, spike wrote:
>
> Here's a mathematical comment that will blow your mind if you think about
> it hard enough, and one which also has real world applications:
>
> e^(i*pi) = -1
>
>
> I think it's even better if you express it as e^(i*PI) +1 =0 because that
> way the 5 most important numbers in mathematics e,i,PI,one and zero are all
> expressed in one short equation. Benjamin Peirce was the most important
> teacher of mathematics at Harvard in the 19'th century, after deriving that
> equation he turned to his students and said:
>
> "Gentlemen that is surely true, it is paradoxical; we cannot understand it
> and we don't know what it means. But we have proven it, and therefore we
> know it must be the truth."
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>
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>
>


-- 
"In the end that's all we have: our memories - electrochemical impulses
stored in eight pounds of tissue the consistency of cold porridge." -
Remembrance of the Daleks
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