The Book without a Name

I have finished my project!

I will just reread the last chapter tonight (uh . . . I mean this morning) to proof it, and then I will have it printed.

It has no name yet.

"Truth and Beauty" just doesn't cut it for the audience I am looking to attract.

One suggestion was "Beauty, not the Beast."

My husband had a suggestion the other night that I don't think I'll use but is perhaps closer: "Frost and Fibonnaci: Not So Strange Bedfellows."

I just can't quite hit it. I want something attention-grabbing, light, compelling and descriptive. I'm not asking for much, am I?

Any suggestions?

. . . later (2)

I had a good talk with a fourth grade teacher tonight regarding ideas for my graduate project. I contacted him to try to brainstorm as I have begun working on my prospectus. He sounds very excited and feels his principal and colleagues will be excited as well.

I also have an appointment to speak with the principal of a private school next week. He also sounds very eager to interact with me about that.

I'm feeling very encouraged.As I continue writing, I am doing a lot of reading, and I came across the following in the preface to the book "Think of a Number: Ideas, Concepts, and Problems which Challenge the Mind and Baffle the Experts." The author is a physicist with mathematical leanings who graduated from Magdalen College, Oxford. He describes his defense of his research back in 1961 in which one long-serving fellow of the college, who had seemed annoyed stood to his feet and said, "These Green's functions that I hear you talking so much about, how would you explain one of those to a medieval historian?"

The author commented that that question has haunted him to this day. In his preface he goes on to say:

Firstly . . . someone who claims to understand, and be excited by, any aspect of science (and yes, even mathematics) ought to be able to pass on the essence of that knowledge and enthusiasm to any reaonably intelligent layperson who is interested. Secondly . . . many of the most exciting advances of this kind do lend themselves admirably to just such exposition. And finally, and perhaps most importantly . . . there may be a much wider potential interest 'out there' than anyone suspects -- if only authors would make a serious effort to bridge the verbal chasm between the specialized jargon of the learned journals and the normal vocabulary of the population at large.

That pretty much parallels what I have set forth as the goal of my work.

As of today I have completed Chapter 4: Empowerment. I have a good direction for Chapter 5: Elegance and have basically finished Chapter 6: Surprise, except for polishing it. I hope to complete my writing within the next two weeks.

I am also planning to include an index, which seems like it will be tedious work. Time will tell. That too needs yet to be done - as do the end notes as I continue writing.

Completed so far: introduction, chapters 1-4, afterword, appendix 1, appendix 2, and references.

. . . later

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Why are the stamps adorned with kings and presidents?
That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.

Well, I have been letting the blog slide as I have focused ever more on my writing.

I really appreciated our meeting last week and found it to be very helpful. I am amazed at how you can turn something around entirely with a change of a single word - for instance:

"empowerment" vs. "power"

"arithmetic" vs. "math"

The power of an appropriate word in an appropriate place is truly amazing - even if it is only subtly different from a seeming synonym.

As we both acknowledged, approaching the concept of elegance is the hardest, but I've made some significant progress in that area. Here too I wrestle with translating from what works in a spoken format to what will work in a written format. I had to throw my old approach to this idea out the window and start fresh.

I imagine the concepts of mathematical and poetic elegance are things that cannot be experienced with fullness through explanation but rather must simply be experienced. I'll just have to explain as best I can and hope some experience comes along with it.

For the most part I have scrupulously avoided "explaining" any poems, but in one instance in this chapter I am allowing myself to take a poem apart and explain it. I realize explaining a poem is along the lines of explaining a joke - it ruins it - but if I ruin just one in order to make others more approachable, that is, perhaps, acceptable.

I'm still concerned that so much of the poetry that I use has death as its theme. It is the one negative comment I have had when speaking on this topic. No matter how many light poems I include, if there is more than one about death people think it is too many. Unfortunately the poem that will work best in my chapter on elegance is "Not Waving but Drowning" by Stevie Smith.

Oh well, at least I found Howard Nemerov's fun poem Power to the People (with which I began this entry). I'm revising chapter one on playfulness to include that - especially pleased to have another playful poem by a "serious" poet.

Week Seven

NOTES ON READING:

Other than dipping into many books for research, my main focus has been Borges and Hofstadter this week. With regard to Borges, I have been reading transcripts of interviews with him, which I have found fascinating. From there I dip into poems and pieces of fiction that he mentions of his own work and of others. In one of the Morgan Lectures (interviews) he gave at Dickinson University, I found this question and answer that are particularly relevant to my work:

Question: Do you think that there is a kind of kinship between poets and mathematicians?

Borges: My mathematics is very slight. But I have read and reread Bertrand Russell. And I think there should be a kinship. And I suppose there is. There is a kinship between all things, especially between poets and mathematicians, and poets and philosophers, who are a measure of poets, I should say.

NOTES ON WRITING

Since sending on my introduction to you I have honed it further and have something I feel very good about. As I have been reading, I have begun to feel compelled to include an afterword too, one that really reinforces the introduction, so I have begun work on that. I have it entirely fleshed out if not entirely written, but it needs a lot of polishing. I am continuing to write quite globally on the chapters but am hoping to have chapter 2 on pattern in a form I feel I can send to you soon. That chapter feels rather belabored and plodding to me, and I've really struggled with making it lighter and smoother. I hope you will be able to help me with that.

Week Six

I'm still plugging along with writing and revising. My main focus right now is on the introduction and chapter two (Pattern). My bibliography continues to expand. I found a wonderful book today on Pascal's Triangle - a pretty significant treatment by A. W. F. Edwards Sc.D. of Cambridge. I'll be able to use very little of it in my book, but it is giving me a very deep background.





In other reading, I've been looking at Agnesi to Zeno by Sanderson Smith, Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief by Roger Lundin, and Lives of the Modern Poets by Pritchard - among other works.

I also keep dipping into Hofstadter and Borges and am eager for Hofstadter's new book I am a Strange Loop to come out. Reviews I've read make it sound like it revisits GEB quite significantly.

Week Five

It was good to talk with you Friday and untagle some ideas. I sense some new possibilities particularly in thinking about "Empowered" rather than "Power." I also have some new ideas for the introduction rolling around in my head - given our talk of the challenge this is and the reasons it is a challenge.

I sent on chapter one, the bibliography so far, and end notes. I hope they came through (if not, let me know, and I'll resend), and I am eager to hear your comments.

If you did not read Frank and Ernest for today (Sunday, March 18, 2007), please do and keep it in mind as you read my first chapter. I found it an interesting paradox coincidence!

Week Four

QUESTION FOR TOM: I'm looking for an Einstein quote you mentioned during winter term about Einstein not caring if the test of the bending of light supported Relativity Theory or not - that the theory was still right. I had heard something like this years ago - that Einstein said, "If Relativity Theory is wrong, that's too bad for God." The closest thing I can find is the general quote: "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts," but I can't find a legitimate source for it. Do you remember where you came across what you shared along these lines in class?

UPDATE: I find that my writing has become a strange attractor. As I read, nearly every paragraph sends me back to my laptop to add to my writing, which sends me out to research, which brings me back to writing. I think before I plow all the way through any more books I need to just sit down and come to grips with this manuscript in full. I don't think I will be released from the grip of the pull of this strange attractor until I at least have a rough draft of the entire manuscript.

At this point I have a fully complete rough draft of chapter 2 (Pattern) -- tedious figures and all -- which needs a LOT of polishing yet. I have also been working more globally on the rest of the manuscript rather than trying to write from start to finish as I had been doing.

I end chapter 2 (Pattern) with fractals, the grand finale being the M-set. I begin chapter 3 (Power) also with the M-set, expressing that all this beauty and complexity can be generated with a mathematical statement of only 6 characters. Part of the power of mathematical language is its brevity.