[HM] Poetry and Mathematics
James Robert Brown (jrbrown@chass.utoronto.ca)
Wed, 15 Dec 1999 08:08:20 -0500
I much enjoyed Robert Tragesser's remarks on poetry and math. Like him, I
think the analogy has nothing to do with notions of beauty, but rather concerns
the interplay of form and content. In a shameless act of self-promotion I'll
direct interested readers to ch 6, "Knots and Notation", of my Philosophy of
Mathmematics: Introduction to the World of Proofs and Pictures (1999, hot off
the press). It's about how the invention of different notations (especially in
knot theory) play such a huge role in the discovery and development of new
results. The comparison with poety is explicity made in some detail.
Jim Brown
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James Robert Brown
Department of Philosophy
University of Toronto
Toronto M5S 1A1
Canada
Phone: office (416) 978-1727, home (519) 439-2889
Email: jrbrown@chass.utoronto.ca
Home page: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~jrbrown/index.htm
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