A Mathematician Goes on Vacation 3

As I said the first week it rained...a lot. That wasn't all bad. I did get a chance to read a bit. I brought along On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz. I'm not much of a biologist so a lot of the animal behavior descriptions flew over my head. But, I felt right at home with the above diagram. How nice to find a Caley table in the middle of a ten page meditation on the nuances of the duck and drake mating ceremony! Remember your multiplication tables? This is a binary operation. A binary of operation of what? Lorenz call the above diagram a motivational analysis Each picture on the diagram is a combination of the dog's fight or flight instincts. If you go down the left most column, you are seeing the progression of the flight instinct. Going across the top most row, you are getting the progression of the fight instinct. Any other image is some combination of the two instincts. All part of the math of mother nature. Quite interesting!

The Math Curse

Sue brought in this awesome kids book for math, The Math Curse. I was flipping through it. The illustrations are great and so is the story. The premise is a little girl starts to see everything as word problem. She's getting dressed, word problem. Oh, no! Riding the bus to school, word problem. She can't turn off the vision. That's the curse. Everything is math. If you have ever had to go to a party right after studying for your topology comps? You know exactly what she is going through.

Literature Numbers

Fenimore Cooper used almost eleven hundred Shakespeare quotations as epigraphs and/or chapter headings in his thirty-plus novels.

From The Last Novel (David Markson)

The Logic Below

I came across this in the 27th Canto of the Inferno. A few lines grabbed my attention in the confession of this condemned spirit.

I was a man of arms, then Cordelier,
Believing thus begirt to make amends;
And truly my belief had been fulfilled

But for the High Priest, whom may ill betide,
Who put me back into my former sins;
And how and wherefore I will have thee hear.

While I was still the form of bone and pulp
My mother gave to me, the deeds I did
Were not those of a lion, but a fox.

The machinations and the covert ways
I knew them all, and practised so their craft,
That to the ends of earth the sound went forth.

When now unto that portion of mine age
I saw myself arrived, when each one ought
To lower the sails, and coil away the ropes,

That which before had pleased me then displeased me;
And penitent and confessing I surrendered,
Ah woe is me! and it would have bestead me;

The Leader of the modern Pharisees
Having a war near unto Lateran,
And not with Saracens nor with the Jews,

For each one of his enemies was Christian,
And none of them had been to conquer Acre,
Nor merchandising in the Sultan's land,

Nor the high office, nor the sacred orders,
In him regarded, nor in me that cord
Which used to make those girt with it more meagre;

But even as Constantine sought out Sylvester
To cure his leprosy, within Soracte,
So this one sought me out as an adept

To cure him of the fever of his pride.
Counsel he asked of me, and I was silent,
Because his words appeared inebriate.

And then he said: 'Be not thy heart afraid;
Henceforth I thee absolve; and thou instruct me
How to raze Palestrina to the ground.

Heaven have I power to lock and to unlock,
As thou dost know; therefore the keys are two,
The which my predecessor held not dear.'

Then urged me on his weighty arguments
There, where my silence was the worst advice;
And said I: 'Father, since thou washest me

Of that sin into which I now must fall,
The promise long with the fulfilment short
Will make thee triumph in thy lofty seat.'

Francis came afterward, when I was dead,
For me; but one of the black Cherubim
Said to him: 'Take him not; do me no wrong;

He must come down among my servitors,
Because he gave the fraudulent advice
From which time forth I have been at his hair;

For who repents not cannot be absolved,
Nor can one both repent and will at once,
Because of the contradiction which consents not.'

O miserable me! how I did shudder
When he seized on me, saying: 'Peradventure
Thou didst not think that I was a logician!'


Never has violating the law of the excluded middle had such dire consequences. One might be interested that logics have been posited that deny this law. Play these logics at your own risk. The black angels are watching.