Log24

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Quotes for Michaelmas

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:48 pm

A search in this journal for material related to the previous post
on theta characteristics yields

"The Solomon Key  is the working title of an unreleased
novel in progress by American author Dan Brown. 
The Solomon Key  will be the third book involving the
character of the Harvard professor Robert Langdon,
of which the first two were Angels & Demons  (2000) and 
The Da Vinci Code  (2003)." — Wikipedia

"One has O+(6) ≅ S8, the symmetric group of order 8! …."
 — "Siegel Modular Forms and Finite Symplectic Groups,"
by Francesco Dalla Piazza and Bert van Geemen, 
May 5, 2008, preprint.

"It was only in retrospect
that the silliness
became profound."

— Review of   
Faust in Copenhagen

"The page numbers
are generally reliable."

— Michaelmas 2007 

For further backstory, click the above link "May 5, 2008," 
which now leads to all posts tagged on080505

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Two Characters

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Yesterday, May 29, was JFK's birthday.
The above is a belated quotation for that occasion.

Click on the quotation for truth instead of rhetoric.

(Why the above Google Books description of the quotation's
source is in Danish, I do not know. A search for
Bohr + Chinese in this journal may be relevant, as may
also be Faust in Copenhagen.)

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Plots

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:02 am

In memory of Copenhagen saxophonist John Tchicai,
who reportedly died last Sunday, October 7, 2012—

IMAGE- John Tchicai album 'Look to the Neutrino'

Quoted in this journal on the reported date of his death

IMAGE- NY Times review of 'Faust in Copenhagen'

But passion ever spins our plots,
And Gretchen is my treasure!

— Wolfgang Pauli character in
     Faust in Copenhagen

Related material—

"Physik als Quelle der Spiritualität:
Ein Weg von 'Gretchen' zurück zu 'Beatrice'?
 
 "
by Bruno Binggeli

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Faust at Harvard (For Bohr’s Birthday)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

Today's Harvard Crimson

Students Discuss Mental Health

In an effort to break the silence on an often-stigmatized topic,
members of the Harvard community gathered to share
experiences with mental illness through spoken word,
interpretive dance, and candid conversations at Friday night’s
second-annual “Words on the Mind” open mic night.

Related material from this  journal on Friday

The Hallowed Crucible

Some related symbolism (headings added Oct. 7)—

Words:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111119-NuclearSymbol-75sq.jpg

Applied Mathematics
(See Nov. 19, 2011.)

The Mind:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111118-CentralProjection.gif

Pure Mathematics
(See Tesseract.)


Today's (Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012)  Google Doodle for Bohr's birthday—


Review
  (See also Faust in Copenhagen in this journal)—

» more

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Summer Reading

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 am

"What summer reading needs to be is purposeful."

New York Times  opinion column today

One of a set of posts titled "Summer Reading"
in this journal in 2007—

(Click for the original post)

IMAGE- Log24 post from August 21, 2007 - 'In the Details'

It was only in retrospect
that the silliness
became profound.

— Review of   
Faust in Copenhagen

Friday, January 22, 2010

Meta Physics

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

Church Emblem

Yin-Yang emblem of duality in Niels Bohr's coat of arms, Frederiksborg Castle Church

Related material:

Faust in Copenhagen,
Meta Physics,
and yesterday's entry.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Friday September 11, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm
For 9/11

Cover of 'Underworld,' by Don DeLillo, First Edition, Advance Reader's Copy, 1997

 

Cover of Underworld,
 by Don DeLillo, First Edition,
 Advance Reader's Copy, 1997

"Time and chance
happeneth to them all."
Ecclesiastes 9:11  

Related material:

1. The previous entry, on
  Copenhagen physicist
Aage Bohr, and      
2. Notes from this journal
 from Bohr's birthday,
 June 19th, through  
        Midsummer Night, 2007…
 including notes on   
  Faust in Copenhagen
   3. Walpurgisnacht 2008 and
 Walpurgisnacht 2009

Monday, May 5, 2008

Monday May 5, 2008

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:07 am
Lottery Sermon

"And take upon's
the mystery of things
 as if we were God's spies"
King Lear  

PA Lottery Sunday, May 4, 2008: mid-day 170, evening 144

From Log24 on Aug. 19, 2003
and on Ash Wednesday, 2004:
a reviewer on
An Instance of the Fingerpost::

"Perhaps we are meant to
see the story as a cubist
   retelling of the crucifixion."

From Log24 on
Michaelmas 2007:

Kate Beckinsale (in 'Pearl Harbor') pointing to an instance of the number 144

Google searches suggested by
Sunday's PA lottery numbers
(mid-day 170, evening 144)
and by the above
figure of Kate Beckinsale
pointing to an instance of
the number 144 —

Click to enlarge:

Search for the meaning of 170 and 144, the PA lottery numbers of Sunday, May 4, 2008

Related material:

Beckinsale in another film
(See At the Crossroads,
Log24, Dec. 8, 2006):

"For every kind of vampire,
there is a kind of cross."
Gravity's Rainbow  
 
Kate Beckinsale in Underworld: Evolution

 

Kate Beckinsale, adapted from
poster for Underworld: Evolution
(DVD release date 6/6/6)
 
There is such a thing
as a tesseract.

"It was only in retrospect
that the silliness
became profound."

— Review of  
Faust in Copenhagen

From the conclusion of
Joan Didion's 1970 novel
  Play It As It Lays

Cover of 'Play It As It Lays'

"I know what 'nothing' means,
and keep on playing."

From Play It As It Lays,
the paperback edition of 1990
  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) —

Page 170:

"By the end of a week she was thinking constantly
about where her body stopped and the air began,
about the exact point in space and time that was the
difference between Maria and other. She had the sense
that if she could get that in her mind and hold it for

170  

even one micro-second she would have what she had
come to get."

"The page numbers
are generally reliable."

Michaelmas 2007   

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Thursday November 22, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:44 am
Aspects of Symmetry

For theoretical physicist
Sidney Coleman,

Sidney Coleman (photo from Harvard  home page)

who died on Sunday
(Nov. 18, 2007)

A comment at Peter Woit’s weblog today:

T says (3:43 AM today)

I still don’t quite understand what *EXACTLY* Sidney Coleman contributed that merits such deep reverence for him after his demise; was he like Weinberg – i.e. a very intuitive and thoughtful field theorist – or Feynman – a highly creative and original thinker; or simply a good teacher who taught at (world-famous) Harvard – and hence his stature?

My reply (4:26 AM today, awaiting moderation):

T: The following quotes may be of interest.

“Sidney Coleman comes as close as any active physicist to assuming the mantle of Wolfgang Pauli as a trenchant critic of research and as an expositor of ongoing developments in theoretical physics.” –Book review of Aspects of Symmetry

“He has… played the role of Wolfgang Pauli of his generation; he liked to disprove ideas, and he was also a genius in explaining things to others.” –Lubos Motl

Related material:

Faust in Copenhagen

and

Kernel of Eternity

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Sunday November 18, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:02 am
For Martin Scorsese
on his birthday, from
the New York Lottery:

Words and Music

Words:
In the Details

"It was only in retrospect
 that the silliness became profound.
The players were becoming possessors
of 'a truth with implicit powers
of good and evil,' Gino Segrè writes
in Faust in Copenhagen

And 'the devil… was in the details.'"

— George Johnson of
The New York Times,
quoted in Log24 on 6/23.

Music:
A Black Berry

"Her wall is filled with pictures,
she gets 'em one by one…."

Chuck Berry, quoted
in Log24 on 2/13.

NY Lottery Nov. 17, 2007: Midday 623, Evening 213

Related material:
Yesterday's Log24 entry

BlackBerry with pictures from Log24

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Saturday September 22, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 6:23 am
Retrospect

"It was only in retrospect
that the silliness
became profound."
— Review of  
Faust in Copenhagen

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Tuesday July 24, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:11 am
The Church of St. Frank

See yesterday’s entries for
some relevant quotations
from Wallace Stevens.

Further quotations for what
Marjorie Garber, replying to
a book review by
Frank Kermode, has called
the Church of St. Frank“–

Frank Kermode on

Harold Bloom:

“He has… a great, almost
selfish passion for poetry,
and he interprets difficult
texts as if there were no
more important activity
in the world, which may
be right.”

Page 348 of Wallace Stevens:
The Poems of Our Climate
,
by Harold Bloom
(1977, Cornell U. Press):

“The fiction of the leaves is now Stevens’ fiction…. Spring, summer, and autumn adorn the rock of reality even as a woman is adorned, the principle being the Platonic one of copying the sun as source of all images….

… They are more than leaves
              that cover the barren rock….

They bear their fruit    
             so that the year is known….

If they are more than leaves, then they are no longer language, and the leaves have ceased to be tropes or poems and have become magic or mysticism, a Will-to-Power over nature rather than over the anteriority of poetic imagery.”

For more on magic, mysticism, and the Platonic “source of all images,” see Scott McLaren on “Hermeticism and the Metaphysics of Goodness in the Novels of Charles Williams.” McLaren quotes Evelyn Underhill on magic vs. mysticism:

The fundamental difference between the two is this: magic wants to get, mysticism wants to give […] In mysticism the will is united with the emotions in an impassioned desire to transcend the sense-world in order that the self may be joined by love to the one eternal and ultimate Object of love […] In magic, the will unites with the intellect in an impassioned desire for supersensible knowledge. This is the intellectual, aggressive, and scientific temperament trying to extend its field of consciousness […] (Underhill 84; see also 178ff.)

— Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. New York: Dutton, 1911.

For more on what Bloom calls the “Will-to-Power over nature,” see Faust in Copenhagen and the recent (20th- and 21st-century) history of Harvard University. These matters are also discussed in “Log24 – Juneteenth through Midsummer Night.”

For more on what Underhill calls “the intellectual, aggressive, and scientific temperament trying to extend its field of consciousness,” see the review, in the August 2007 Notices of the American Mathematical Society, of a book by Douglas Hofstadter– a writer on the nature of consciousness— by magician Martin Gardner.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Saturday June 23, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am
Faust in Copenhagen:
 
A Struggle for
the Soul of Physics

By Gino Segrè

Illustrated. 310 pp.
Viking. $25.95.

 The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/FaustInCopenhagen.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

Review in the June 24
New York Times Book Review:

“As though their knowledge of the quantum secrets came with the power of prophecy, some three dozen of Europe’s best physicists ended their 1932 meeting in Copenhagen with a parody of Goethe’s ‘Faust.’….

It was only in retrospect that the silliness became profound. The players were becoming possessors of ‘a truth with implicit powers of good and evil,’ Gino Segrè writes in ‘Faust in Copenhagen,’ his inventive new book about the era. And ‘the devil… was in the details.'” –George Johnson

Related material:

This week’s entries
on Pauli and Faust,
the entries of
  June 3 through June 6,
and the five entries
ending on April 7, 2005,
with “In the Details

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Wednesday June 20, 2007

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 1:06 am

Kernel

Mathematical Reviews citation:

MR2163497 (2006g:81002) 81-03 (81P05)
Gieser, Suzanne The innermost kernel. Depth psychology and quantum physics. Wolfgang Pauli's dialogue with C. G. Jung. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2005. xiv+378 pp. ISBN: 3-540-20856-9

A quote from MR at Amazon.com:

"This revised translation of a Swedish Ph. D. thesis in philosophy offers far more than a discussion of Wolfgang Pauli's encounters with the psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung…. Here the book explains very well how Pauli attempted to extend his understanding beyond superficial esotericism and spiritism…. To understand Pauli one needs books like this one, which… seems to open a path to a fuller understanding of Pauli, who was seeking to solve a quest even deeper than quantum physics." (Arne Schirrmacher, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2006g)
 

An excerpt:

 

The image “http://www.log24.com/theory/images/PauliSquare.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

I do not yet know what Gieser means by "the innermost kernel." The following is my version of a "kernel" of sorts– a diagram well-known to students of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss and art theorist Rosalind Krauss:

The four-group is also known as the Vierergruppe or Klein group.  It appears, notably, as the translation subgroup of A, the group of 24 automorphisms of the affine plane over the 2-element field, and therefore as the kernel of the homomorphism taking A to the group of 6 automorphisms of the projective line over the 2-element field. (See Finite Geometry of the Square and Cube.)

Related material:

The "chessboard" of
   Nov. 7, 2006
(as revised Nov. 7, 2012)–

I Ching chessboard. Previous version replaced on Nov. 7, 2012, by original 1989 chessboard arrangement

I Ching chessboard

None of this material really has much to do with the history of physics, except for its relation to the life and thought of physicist Wolfgang Pauli— the "Mephistopheles" of the new book Faust in Copenhagen. (See previous entry.)

"Only gradually did I discover
what the mandala really is:
'Formation, Transformation,
Eternal Mind's eternal recreation'"

(Faust, Part Two, as
quoted by Jung in
Memories, Dreams, Reflections)
 

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Tuesday June 19, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:17 pm

 Faustus is gone:
regard his hellish fall

Marlowe

I have just read, in the New York Times Book Review that arrived in yesterday's mail, a review of Segre's Faust in Copenhagen.  The review, on news stands next Sunday, was titled by the Times "Meta Physicists."

On Faust— today's noon entry and yesterday's "Nightmare Lessons."

On "Meta Physicists"– an entry of June 6, on Cullinane College, has a section titled "Meta Physics."

On Copenhagen— an entry of Bloomsday Eve, 2004 on a native of that city.

Another Dane:

"Words, words, words."
Hamlet

Another metaphysics:

"317 is a prime,
not because we think so,
or because our minds
are shaped in one way
rather than another,
but because it is so,
because mathematical
reality is built that way."

 — G. H. Hardy,
A Mathematician's Apology

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