"What is 256 about?" … One possible answer— Schema.
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Phenomenology of 256
From Peter J. Cameron's weblog today—
According to the Buddha,
Scholars speak in sixteen ways of the state of the soul after death. They say that it has form or is formless; has and has not form, or neither has nor has not form; it is finite or infinite; or both or neither; it has one mode of consciousness or several; has limited consciousness or infinite; is happy or miserable; or both or neither.
He does go on to say that such speculation is unprofitable; but bear with me for a moment.
With logical constructs such as “has and has not form, or neither has nor has not form”, it is perhaps a little difficult to see what is going on. But, while I hesitate to disagree with the Compassionate One, I think there are more than sixteen possibilities described here: how many?
Cameron's own answer (from problem solutions for his book Combinatorics)–
One could argue here that the numbers of choices should be multiplied, not added; there are 4 choices for form, 4 for finiteness, 2 for modes of consciousness, 2 for finiteness of consciousness, and 4 for happiness, total 28 = 256. (You may wish to consider whether all 256 are really possible.)
Related material– "What is 256 about?"
Some partial answers–
April 2, 2003 — The Question (lottery number)
May 2, 2003 — Zen and Language Games (page number)
August 4, 2003 — Venn's Trinity (power of two)
September 28, 2005 — Mathematical Narrative (page number)
October 26, 2005 — Human Conflict Number Five (chronomancy)
June 23, 2006 — Binary Geometry (power of two)
July 23, 2006 — Partitions (power of two)
October 3, 2006 — Hard Lessons (number of pages,
as counted in one review)
October 10, 2006 — Mate (lottery number)
October 8, 2008 — Serious Numbers (page number)
Quoted here Nov. 10, 2009—
Epigraphs at
Peter Cameron’s home page:
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Sunday July 23, 2006
Dance of the Numbers, continued:
Partitions
Freeman Dyson on the role of the “crank” in the theory of partitions:
“‘Each step in the story is a work of art,’ Dyson says, ‘and the story as a whole is a sequence of episodes of rare beauty, a drama built out of nothing but numbers and imagination.'”
— Erica Klarreich in
Science News Online, week of
June 18, 2005, quoted in
“In Honor of Freeman Dyson’s Birthday:
Dance of the Numbers“
(Log24, Dec. 15, 2005)
Paraphrase of Freeman Dyson’s remarks in The New York Review of Books, issue dated May 28, 1998:
“Theology is about words; science is about things.“
“What is 256 about?”
— Reply to Freeman Dyson,
(May 15, 1998)
A partial answer to that rhetorical question: 256 is the cardinality of the power set of an 8-set.
For the role played by 8-sets and by 23 (today’s date) in partitions of a different sort, see Geometry of the 4×4 Square.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Wednesday October 26, 2005
Number Five
(Album title, 10,000 Maniacs)
This album contains
Planned Obsolescence:
science
is truth for life
watch religion fall obsolete
science
will be truth for life
technology as nature
science
truth for life
in fortran tongue the
answer
with wealth and prominence
man so near perfection
possession
it’s an absence of interim
secure no demurrer
defense against divine
defense against his true
image
human conflict number five
discovery
dissolved all illusion
mystery
destroyed with conclusion
and illusion never restored
any modern man can see
that religion is
obsolete
piety
obsolete
ritual
obsolete
martyrdom
obsolete
prophetic vision
obsolete
mysticism
obsolete
commitment
obsolete
sacrament
obsolete
revelation
obsolete
Secrets of the I Ching
(Album title, 10,000 Maniacs)
Time of this entry: 2:56:37
Question suggested by the
lottery in the state of Grace
(Kelly) on the night Sinatra died:
Answer: 37.
In other words…
37. The Family (The Clan)
For details, see Log24,
11 AM Sunday, October 16: