<div>John wrote:</div><div><br></div><div>> . . .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."<</div>
<div><br></div><div>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. </div>
<div><br></div><div>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. </div>
<div><br></div><div>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.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Don't know where this sudden introspection came from. Math? Why not?</div><div><br></div><div>Darren</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">2010/11/28 John Clark <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jonkc@bellsouth.net">jonkc@bellsouth.net</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div class="im"><div><div>On Nov 26, 2010, at 9:06 PM, spike wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><span style="border-collapse:separate;font-family:Verdana;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;line-height:normal;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;font-size:medium"><div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple">
<div><div style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0in;font-family:'Times New Roman', serif"><span style="color:rgb(31, 73, 125);font-family:Calibri, sans-serif">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:</span></div>
<div><div style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0in;font-family:'Times New Roman', serif"><span style="font-family:Calibri, sans-serif;color:rgb(31, 73, 125)"> </span><span style="color:rgb(31, 73, 125);font-family:Calibri, sans-serif"> </span></div>
<div><div style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;margin-left:0in;font-family:'Times New Roman', serif"><span style="color:rgb(31, 73, 125)">e^(i*pi) = −1</span></div></div></div></div></div>
</span></blockquote><br></div></div><div>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:</div>
<div><br></div><div>"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."</div><div><br>
</div><div> John K Clark </div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><font face="Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif"><span style="line-height:26px"><span style="font-family:'Lucida Grande', 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;line-height:normal;color:rgb(255, 255, 255)"><span style="margin-top:0px;margin-right:0px;margin-bottom:0px;margin-left:0px;padding-top:0px;padding-right:0px;padding-bottom:0px;padding-left:0px;font-style:italic"><span style="background-color:rgb(0, 0, 0)">"In the end that's all we have: our memories - electrochemical impulses stored in eight pounds of tissue the consistency of cold porridge." </span></span><span style="background-color:rgb(0, 0, 0)">- Remembrance of the Daleks</span></span></span></font><br>