I’m in the middle of reading a wonderful fantasy. It’s John Crowley’s four-volume series Aegypt (not to be confused with his one-volume book Aegypt published a decade or two ago.) It is about a man who discovers that (here’s the fantasy) there is more than one history of the world. Only a few hundred years ago, the Earth was at the centre of the universe. It was when people started to realise this wasn’t so that the universe changed. Before that, the Earth was at the centre of the universe, and always had been so. After that the Earth wasn’t at the centre, and had never been there.
This book excites my sense of wonder, even though I know it isn’t so.
I’m also reading articles on how category theory is applied to quantum mechanics, and how this brings with it a whole set of nonclassical logics—logics in which proof by contradiction fail, and in which ‘and’ and ‘or’ don’t distribute (which I believe plays havoc with Bayes’ theorem). Fascinating stuff.
In the sixties I was drunk on Cantor’s theories of transfinite numbers, just intoxicated with an appreciation of their sheer, unimaginable hugeness. Don’t tell me that mathematics is dry, and there is no sense of wonder there.
In the seventies I became a constructivist. Gone were all those transfinite objects. But the sense of wonder remains, and I keep finding new things to amaze me—the sheer intricate details of finite things, and of merely countable infinity. The boundary between finite representations of the infinite and the infinite things represented is wonderfully intricate in detail.
The sense of wonder is innate. It attaches itself to things that exist and things that don’t. There’s no need to give it up merely because you’ve felt the divine in things that are unreal. It’s still there, even if the things aren’t. It’s still there, even if the things are.
But is it important to distinguish what is real and what is not.
I’m in the middle of reading a wonderful fantasy. It’s John Crowley’s four-volume series Aegypt (not to be confused with his one-volume book Aegypt published a decade or two ago.) It is about a man who discovers that (here’s the fantasy) there is more than one history of the world. Only a few hundred years ago, the Earth was at the centre of the universe. It was when people started to realise this wasn’t so that the universe changed. Before that, the Earth was at the centre of the universe, and always had been so. After that the Earth wasn’t at the centre, and had never been there.
This book excites my sense of wonder, even though I know it isn’t so.
I’m also reading articles on how category theory is applied to quantum mechanics, and how this brings with it a whole set of nonclassical logics—logics in which proof by contradiction fail, and in which ‘and’ and ‘or’ don’t distribute (which I believe plays havoc with Bayes’ theorem). Fascinating stuff.
In the sixties I was drunk on Cantor’s theories of transfinite numbers, just intoxicated with an appreciation of their sheer, unimaginable hugeness. Don’t tell me that mathematics is dry, and there is no sense of wonder there.
In the seventies I became a constructivist. Gone were all those transfinite objects. But the sense of wonder remains, and I keep finding new things to amaze me—the sheer intricate details of finite things, and of merely countable infinity. The boundary between finite representations of the infinite and the infinite things represented is wonderfully intricate in detail.
The sense of wonder is innate. It attaches itself to things that exist and things that don’t. There’s no need to give it up merely because you’ve felt the divine in things that are unreal. It’s still there, even if the things aren’t. It’s still there, even if the things are.
But is it important to distinguish what is real and what is not.