Category: Geometry Page 13 of 168

Autistic Enchantment

(Continued from Sept. 3, 2009) George Steiner on chess: "At the sight of a set, even the tawdriest of plastic pocket sets, one’s fingers arch and a coldness…

Principles of Aesthetics

Or:  Phantasmagoria Meets Pandemonium Part I: Phantasmagoria Rebecca Goldstein on first encountering Plato — “I was reading Durant’s section on Plato, struggling to understand his theory of the ideal…

Mysterious Correspondences

(Continued from Beautiful Mathematics, Dec. 14, 2013) “Seemingly unrelated structures turn out to have mysterious correspondences.” — Jim Holt, opening paragraph of a book review in the Dec. 5, 2013, issue of The New…

Big Time

The following post suggests the Spiders and Snakes of Fritz Leiber’s Changewar , a mythology inspired by the hallucinations of delirium tremens .

Mathematics for Tromsø

Loren Olson, Harvard ’64, a professor of mathematics at Norway’s Tromsø University,* died June 22, 2014. In his memory, a search in this journal for Lie Group. That search…

Michaelmas Texts

This morning’s previous post quoted a sort of invitation to damnation from Princeton University Press: An alternative to damnation:

Michaelmas Mystery

Some related material in this journal: “Peter J. Cameron” + Magic.

Mystery

"Welcome to America." — Harrison Ford in "The Devil's Own" America  (current issue): On readings at Mass on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 — "Isaiah 55:8-9: 'For my thoughts are not your…

Space

Review of an image from a post of May 6, 2009:

Saturday-Morning Concept

“Why Is Our Sci-Fi So Glum About A.I.?,” by Jayson Greene, NY Times Sunday Magazine  today — “You come to pity these advanced beings, bumping against the dunderheaded constraints…