Showing posts with label Donald Coxeter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Coxeter. Show all posts

Friday, May 24, 2013

Who is the Clockmaker?

Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) - oil painting by Salvador Dalí
I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?
  • From Cosmic religion: with other opinions and aphorisms (1931), Albert Einstein, pub. Covici-Friede. Quoted in The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition (May 30, 2000); Page 208, ISBN 0691070210
The phrase of course stuck in my mind. Who is the clockmaker. I was more at ease with what Einstein quote spoke about with regards to the fourth dimension and here, thoughts of Dali made their way into my head.

The watchmaker analogy, watchmaker fallacy, or watchmaker argument, is a teleological argument. By way of an analogy, the argument states that design implies a designer. The analogy has played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God and for the intelligent design of the universe.

The most famous statement of the teleological argument using the watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in his 1802 book. The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection put forward an alternative explanation for complexity and adaptation, and so provided a counter-argument to the watchmaker analogy. Richard Dawkins referred to the analogy in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker giving his explanation of evolution.

In the United States, starting in the 1960s, creationists revived versions of the argument to dispute the concepts of evolution and natural selection, and there was renewed interest in the watchmaker argument.
I have always shied away from the argument based on the analogy, fallacy and argument, as I wanted to show my thoughts here regardless of what had been transmitted and exposed on an objective level argument. Can I do this without incurring the wrought of a perspective in society and share my own?

I mean even Dali covered the Tesseract by placing Jesus on the cross in a sense Dali was exposing something that such dimensional significance may have been implied as some degree of Einstein's quote above? Of course I speculate but it always being held to some idea of a dimensional constraint that no other words can speak of it other then it's science. Which brings me back to Einstein's quote.

The construction of a hypercube can be imagined the following way:
  • 1-dimensional: Two points A and B can be connected to a line, giving a new line segment AB.
  • 2-dimensional: Two parallel line segments AB and CD can be connected to become a square, with the corners marked as ABCD.
  • 3-dimensional: Two parallel squares ABCD and EFGH can be connected to become a cube, with the corners marked as ABCDEFGH.
  • 4-dimensional: Two parallel cubes ABCDEFGH and IJKLMNOP can be connected to become a hypercube, with the corners marked as ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP.

So for me it is about what lays at the basis of reality as to question that all our experiences, in some way masks the inevitable design at a deeper level of perceptions so as to say that such a diagram is revealing.

I operate from this principal given the understanding that all experience is part of the diagram of the logic of a visual reasoning in which such examples are dispersed upon our assessments of the day. While Einstein spoke, he had a reason from which such quote espoused the picture he had in his head?

Also too if I were to deal with the subjectivity of our perceptions then how could I ever be clear as I muddy the waters of such straight lines and such with all the pictures of a dream by Pauli?  I ask that however you look at the plainness of the dream expanded by Jung, that one consider the pattern underneath it all.  I provide 2 links below for examination.



This page lists the regular polytopes in Euclidean, spherical and hyperbolic spaces. Clicking on any picture will magnify it.

The Schläfli symbol notation describes every regular polytope, and is used widely below as a compact reference name for each.

The regular polytopes are grouped by dimension and subgrouped by convex, nonconvex and infinite forms. Nonconvex forms use the same vertices as the convex forms, but have intersecting facets. Infinite forms tessellate a one lower dimensional Euclidean space.

Infinite forms can be extended to tessellate a hyperbolic space. Hyperbolic space is like normal space at a small scale, but parallel lines diverge at a distance. This allows vertex figures to have negative angle defects, like making a vertex with 7 equilateral triangles and allowing it to lie flat. It cannot be done in a regular plane, but can be at the right scale of a hyperbolic plane.



See Also:

  • Pauli's World Clock

  • Monday, May 14, 2012

    Questions on the History of Mathematics



    Arthur Miller
    Einstein and Schrödinger never fully accepted the highly abstract nature of Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, says Miller. They agreed with Galileo's assertion that "the book of nature is written in mathematics", but they also realized the power of using visual imagery to represent mathematical symbols.


    For most people I am sure it is of little interest that such an abstract language could have ever amounted to anything,since we might have been circumscribed to the natural living that is required that we could do without it. But really,  can we?

     Paul Dirac 

    When one is doing mathematical work, there are essentially two different ways of thinking about the subject: the algebraic way, and the geometric way. With the algebraic way, one is all the time writing down equations and following rules of deduction, and interpreting these equations to get more equations. With the geometric way, one is thinking in terms of pictures; pictures which one imagines in space in some way, and one just tries to get a feeling for the relationships between the quantities occurring in those pictures. Now, a good mathematician has to be a master of both ways of those ways of thinking, but even so, he will have a preference for one or the other; I don't think he can avoid it. In my own case, my own preference is especially for the geometrical way.

    So of course one appreciates those who start the conversation to help raise the questions in ones own mind. Might it be a shared response to something existing deeper in our society that it would warrant descriptions that we might be lacking in. Ways in which to describe something about nature. There is something definitely to be said about the geometer that can visualize the spaces within which they are working. It has to make sense. It has to describe something? Why then not just plain English(whatever language you choose)


    String theory's mathematical tools were designed to unlock the most profound secrets of the cosmos, but they could have a far less esoteric purpose: to tease out the properties of some of the most complex yet useful types of material here on Earth.What Good are Mathematics in the Real World?
    Do you know how many mathematical expressions are needed in order to describe the theory?

     The language of physics is mathematics. In order to study physics seriously, one needs to learn mathematics that took generations of brilliant people centuries to work out. Algebra, for example, was cutting-edge mathematics when it was being developed in Baghdad in the 9th century. But today it's just the first step along the journey.Guide to math needed to study physics


    Conversations on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics

    How mathematics arose from cognitive realizations. Ex. Newton and Calculus. The branches of mathematics. Who are it's developers and what did they develop and why?

     It may be as important as the history in relation to how one may perceive the history and development of mathematics. These were important insights into the way one might of asked how did emergence exist if such things could have been imagined in the mind of the beholder. To attempt to describe nature in the way that one might do by invention? So are these mathematical things discovered or are they invented? Why the history is important?

     This is the basis of the question of what already exists in terms of information has always existed and we are only getting a preview of a much more complicated system. It does not have to be a question of what a MBT exemplifies in itself, but raises the questions about what already exists, exists as part of what always existed. Where do ideas and mathematics come from?

    This is a foundation stance that is taken right throughout science? If it exists in the universe, it exists in you? How does one connect?


    See Also:

    WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION? 

    See Also: Some Educational links to look at then.




    Thursday, April 19, 2012

    Model Building in Life

    "...underwriting the form languages of ever more domains of mathematics is a set of deep patterns which not only offer access to a kind of ideality that Plato claimed to see the universe as created with in the Timaeus; more than this, the realm of Platonic forms is itself subsumed in this new set of design elements-- and their most general instances are not the regular solids, but crystallographic reflection groups. You know, those things the non-professionals call . . . kaleidoscopes! * (In the next exciting episode, we'll see how Derrida claims mathematics is the key to freeing us from 'logocentrism'-- then ask him why, then, he jettisoned the deepest structures of mathematical patterning just to make his name...)

    * H. S. M. Coxeter, Regular Polytopes (New York: Dover, 1973) is the great classic text by a great creative force in this beautiful area of geometry (A polytope is an n-dimensional analog of a polygon or polyhedron. Chapter V of this book is entitled 'The Kaleidoscope'....)"


    I just wanted to show you what has been physically reproduced in cultures. This in order to highlight some of the things that were part of our own make up,  so you get that what has transpired in our societies has been part of something hidden within our own selves.

    As I have said before it has become something of an effort for me to cataloged knowledge on some of  the things I learn.  The ways in which to keep the information together. I am not saying everyone will do this in there own way but it seems to me that as if some judgement about our selves is hidden in the way we had gathered information about our own lives then it may have been put together like some kaleidoscope.


    Online Etymology Dictionary-1817, lit. "observer of beautiful forms," coined by its inventor, Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), from Gk. kalos "beautiful" + eidos "shape" (see -oid) + -scope, on model of telescope, etc. Figurative meaning "constantly changing pattern" is first attested 1819 in Lord Byron, whose publisher had sent him one.

    So to say then past accomplishments were part of the designs, what had we gained about our own lives then?  What page in the book of Mandalas can you have said that any one belonged to you? It was that way for me in that I saw the choices. These I thought I had built on my own, as some inclination of a method and way to deliver meaning into my own life. Then through exploration it seem to contain the energy of all that I had been before as to say that in this life now, that energy could unfold?




    Scan of painting 19th century Tibetan Buddhist thangka painting
    Maṇḍala (मण्डल) is a Sanskrit word meaning "circle." In the Buddhist and Hindu religious traditions their sacred art often takes a mandala form. The basic form of most Hindu and Buddhist mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point. Each gate is in the shape of a T.[1][2] Mandalas often exhibit radial balance.[3]


    These mandalas, concentric diagrams, have spiritual and ritual significance in both Buddhism and Hinduism.[4][5] The term is of Hindu origin and appears in the Rig Veda as the name of the sections of the work, but is also used in other Indian religions, particularly Buddhism. In the Tibetan branch of Vajrayana Buddhism, mandalas have been developed into sandpainting. They are also a key part of anuttarayoga tantra meditation practices.


    In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of aspirants and adepts, as a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred space, and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. According to the psychologist David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises."[6] The psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw the mandala as "a representation of the unconscious self,"[citation needed] and believed his paintings of mandalas enabled him to identify emotional disorders and work towards wholeness in personality.[7]


    In common use, mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the Universe from the human perspective.[citation needed]


    So what does this mean then that you see indeed some subjects that are allocated toward design of to say that it may be an art of a larger universal understanding that hidden in our natures the will to provide for something schematically inherent? Our nature,  as to the way in which we see the world. The way in which we see science. What cosmic plan then to say the universe would unfold this way, or  to seek the inner structure and explanations as to the way the universe began. The way we emerged into consciousness of who you are?

     The kaleidoscope was perfected by Sir David Brewster, a Scottish scientist, in 1816. This technological invention, whose function is literally the production of beauty, or rather its observation, was etymologically a typical aesthetic form of the nineteenth century - one bound up with disinterested contemplation. (The etymology of the word is formed from kalos (beautiful), eidos (form) and scopos (watcher) - "watcher of beautiful shapes".) The invention is enjoying a second life today - as the model for many contemporary abstract works. In Olafur Eliasson's Kaleidoscope (2001), the viewer takes the place of the pieces of glass, producing a myriad of images. In an inversion of the situation involved in the classic kaleidoscope, the watcher becomes the watched. In Jim Drain's Kaleidoscope (2003), the viewer is also plunged physically inside the myriad of abstract forms, and his image becomes a part of the environment. Spin My Wheel (2003), by Lori Hersberger, also forms a painting that is developed in space, spilling beyond the frame of the picture, its projected image constantly changing, dissolving the surrounding world with an infinite play of reflections in fragments of broken mirror. The viewer becomes one of the subjects of the piece. (Not the subject, as in Eliasson's work, but one of its subjects.)
    See: The End of Perspective-Vincent Pécoil.

    Would there be then some algorithmic style to the code written in your life as to have all the things you are as some pattern as to the way in which you will live your life? I ask then what would seem so strange that you might not paint a picture of it? Not encode your life in some mathematical principle as to say that life emerge for you in this way?


    Although Aristotle in general had a more empirical and experimental attitude than Plato, modern science did not come into its own until Plato's Pythagorean confidence in the mathematical nature of the world returned with Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. For instance, Aristotle, relying on a theory of opposites that is now only of historical interest, rejected Plato's attempt to match the Platonic Solids with the elements -- while Plato's expectations are realized in mineralogy and crystallography, where the Platonic Solids occur naturally.Plato and Aristotle, Up and Down-Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.



    See Also:

    Friday, June 10, 2011

    Donald Coxeter


    Photo by Graham Challifour. Reproduced from Critchlow, 1979, p. 132.




    "I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered."Harold Scott Macdonald (H. S. M.) Coxeter
    While a layman in my pursuance and understanding of the nature of geometry, it is along the way we meet some educators who fire up our excitement. For me it is about the truth of what lies so close to the soul's ideal.

    Michael Atiyah:
    At this point in the development, although geometry provided a common framework for all the forces, there was still no way to complete the unification by combining quantum theory and general relativity. Since quantum theory deals with the very small and general relativity with the very large, many physicists feel that, for all practical purposes, there is no need to attempt such an ultimate unification. Others however disagree, arguing that physicists should never give up on this ultimate search, and for these the hunt for this final unification is the ‘holy grail’.

    As if searching for a foundation principle, and highly subjective one in my case, I have been touched by example, as if to direct my attention to the early geometer.



    Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann 1826 – 1866

    Riemannian Geometry, also known as elliptical geometry, is the geometry of the surface of a sphere. It replaces Euclid's Parallel Postulate with, "Through any point in the plane, there exists no line parallel to a given line." A line in this geometry is a great circle. The sum of the angles of a triangle in Riemannian Geometry is > 180°.

    To me this is one of the greatest achievements of mathematical structures that one could encounter, It revolutionize many a view, that been held to classical discriptions of reality.

    In the quiet achievement of Riemann’s tutorial teacher Gauss, recognized the great potential in his student. On the curvature parameters, we recognize in Gauss’s work, what would soon became apparent? That we were being lead into another world for consideration?





    XXV.  Gaussian Co-ordinates-click on Picture

    Albert Einstein (1879–1955).  Relativity: The Special and General Theory.  1920.

    So here we are, that we might in our considerations go beyond the global perspectives, to another world that Einstein would so methodically reveal in the geometry and physics, that it would include the electromagnetic considerations of Maxwell into a cohesive whole and beyond.


    "Let no one destitute of geometry enter my doors."


    The intuitive development that we are lead through geometrically asks us to consider again, how Riemann moved to a positive aspect of the universe?


    See:Donald Coxeter: The Man Who Saved Geometry

    Tuesday, January 20, 2009

    Raindrops



    I dunno.

    After some thinking, how is it one can think that such an abstraction could descend into the modern mind, and think it reveals the idea of nature in expression? It's just an artistic interpretation then, nothing more?

    The cycle of creativity is an interesting circuit to the droplet form. As an idea and such, a condensible feature of the "subtle and storm gathering" into a distillation of a kind?

    5. Regular polytope: If you keep pulling the hypercube into higher and higher dimensions you get a polytope. Coxeter is famous for his work on regular polytopes. When they involve coordinates made of complex numbers they are called complex polytopes.


    How many crack point numbers for this poetic version?:) Baez's Crackpot index is a joke.

    Sunday, June 08, 2008

    Who said it?

    At this point in the development, although geometry provided a common framework for all the forces, there was still no way to complete the unification by combining quantum theory and general relativity. Since quantum theory deals with the very small and general relativity with the very large, many physicists feel that, for all practical purposes, there is no need to attempt such an ultimate unification. Others however disagree, arguing that physicists should never give up on this ultimate search, and for these the hunt for this final unification is the ‘holy grail’. Michael Atiyah


    "No Royal Road to Geometry?"

    Click on the Picture

    Are you an observant person? Look at the above picture. Why ask such a question as to, "No Royal Road to Geometry?" This presupposes that a logic is formulated that leads not only one by the "phenomenological values" but by the very principal of logic itself.

    All those who have written histories bring to this point their account of the development of this science. Not long after these men came Euclid, who brought together the Elements, systematizing many of the theorems of Eudoxus, perfecting many of those of Theatetus, and putting in irrefutable demonstrable form propositions that had been rather loosely established by his predecessors. He lived in the time of Ptolemy the First, for Archimedes, who lived after the time of the first Ptolemy, mentions Euclid. It is also reported that Ptolemy once asked Euclid if there was not a shorter road to geometry that through the Elements, and Euclid replied that there was no royal road to geometry. He was therefore later than Plato's group but earlier than Eratosthenes and Archimedes, for these two men were contemporaries, as Eratosthenes somewhere says. Euclid belonged to the persuasion of Plato and was at home in this philosophy; and this is why he thought the goal of the Elements as a whole to be the construction of the so-called Platonic figures. (Proclus, ed. Friedlein, p. 68, tr. Morrow)


    I don't think I could of made it any easier for one, but to reveal the answer in the quote. Now you must remember how the logic is introduced here, and what came before Euclid. The postulates are self evident in his analysis but, little did he know that there would be a "Royal Road indeed" to geometry that was much more complex and beautiful then the dry implication logic would reveal of itself.

    It's done for a reason and all the geometries had to be leading in this progressive view to demonstrate that a "projective geometry" is the final destination, although, still evolving?

    Eventually it was discovered that the parallel postulate is logically independent of the other postulates, and you get a perfectly consistent system even if you assume that parallel postulate is false. This means that it is possible to assign meanings to the terms "point" and "line" in such a way that they satisfy the first four postulates but not the parallel postulate. These are called non-Euclidean geometries. Projective geometry is not really a typical non-Euclidean geometry, but it can still be treated as such.

    In this axiomatic approach, projective geometry means any collection of things called "points" and things called "lines" that obey the same first four basic properties that points and lines in a familiar flat plane do, but which, instead of the parallel postulate, satisfy the following opposite property instead:

    The projective axiom: Any two lines intersect (in exactly one point).


    If you are "ever the artist" it is good to know in which direction you will use the sun, in order to demonstrate the shadowing that will go on into your picture. While you might of thought there was everything to know about Plato's cave and it's implication I am telling you indeed that the logic is a formative apparatus concealed in the geometries that are used to explain such questions about, "the shape of space."

    The Material World

    There are two reasons that having mapped E8 is so important. The practical one is that E8 has major applications: mathematical analysis of the most recent versions of string theory and supergravity theories all keep revealing structure based on E8. E8 seems to be part of the structure of our universe.

    The other reason is just that the complete mapping of E8 is the largest mathematical structure ever mapped out in full detail by human beings. It takes 60 gigabytes to store the map of E8. If you were to write it out on paper in 6-point print (that's really small print), you'd need a piece of paper bigger than the island of Manhattan. This thing is huge.


    Polytopes and allotrope are examples to me of "shapes in their formative compulsions" that while very very small in their continuing expression, "below planck length" in our analysis of the world, has an "formative structure" in the case of the allotrope in the material world. The polytopes, as an abstract structure of math thinking about the world. As if in nature's other ways.



    This illustration depicts eight of the allotropes (different molecular configurations) that pure carbon can take:

    a) Diamond
    b) Graphite
    c) Lonsdaleite
    d) Buckminsterfullerene (C60)
    e) C540
    f) C70
    g) Amorphous carbon
    h) single-walled carbon nanotube


    Review of experiments

    Graphite exhibits elastic behaviour and even improves its mechanical strength up to the temperature of about 2500 K. Measured changes in ultrasonic velocity in graphite after high temperature creep shows marked plasticity at temperatures above 2200 K [16]. From the standpoint of thermodynamics, melting is a phase transition of the first kind, with an abrupt enthalpy change constituting the heat of melting. Therefore, any experimental proof of melting is associated with direct recording of the temperature dependence of enthalpy in the neighbourhood of a melting point. Pulsed heating of carbon materials was studied experimentally by transient electrical resistance and arc discharge techniques, in millisecond and microsecond time regime (see, e.g., [17, 18]), and by pulsed laser heating, in microsecond, nanosecond and picosecond time regime (see, e.g., [11, 19, 20]). Both kind of experiments recorded significant changes in the material properties (density, electrical and thermal conductivity, reflectivity, etc. ) within the range 4000-5000 K, interpreted as a phase change to a liquid state. The results of graphite irradiation by lasers suggest [11] that there is at least a small range of temperatures for which liquid carbon can exist at pressure as low as 0.01 GPa. The phase boundaries between graphite and liquid were investigated experimentally and defined fairly well.


    Sean Carroll:But if you peer closely, you will see that the bottom one is the lopsided one — the overall contrast (representing temperature fluctuations) is a bit higher on the left than on the right, while in the untilted image at the top they are (statistically) equal. (The lower image exaggerates the claimed effect in the real universe by a factor of two, just to make it easier to see by eye.)
    See The Lopsided Universe-.

    #36.Plato on Jun 12th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    Lawrence,

    Thanks again.

    “I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered.”Harold Scott Macdonald (H. S. M.) Coxeter

    Moving to polytopes or allotrope seem to have values in science? Buckminister Fuller and Richard Smalley in terms of allotrope.

    I was looking at Sylvestor surfaces and the Clebsch diagram. Cayley too. These configurations to me were about “surfaces,” and if we were to allot a progression to the “projective geometries” here in relation to higher dimensional thinking, “as the polytope[E8]“(where Coxeter[I meant to apologize for misspelling earlier] drew us to abstraction to the see “higher dimensional relations” toward Plato’s light.)

    As the furthest extent of the Conjecture , how shall we place the dynamics of Sylvestor surfaces and B Fields in relation to the timeline of these geometries? Historically this would seem in order, but under the advancement of thinking in theoretics does it serve a purpose? Going beyond “planck length” what is a person to do?

    Thanks for the clarifications on Lagrange points. This is how I see the WMAP.

    Diagram of the Lagrange Point gravitational forces associated with the Sun-Earth system. WMAP orbits around L2, which is about 1.5 million km from the Earth. Lagrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two body system like the Sun and the Earth produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion. The forces at L2 tend to keep WMAP aligned on the Sun-Earth axis, but requires course correction to keep the spacecraft from moving toward or away from the Earth.


    Such concentration in the view of Sean’s group of the total WMAP while finding such a concentration would be revealing would it not of this geometrical instance in relation to gravitational gathering or views of the bulk tendency? Another example to show this fascinating elevation to non-euclidean, gravitational lensing, could be seen in this same light.

    Such mapping would be important to the context of “seeing in the whole universe.”


    See:No Royal Road to Geometry
    Allotropes and the Ray of Creation
    Pasquale Del Pezzo and E8 Origination?
    Projective Geometries

    Tuesday, February 12, 2008

    Theoretical Excellence

    Although Aristotle in general had a more empirical and experimental attitude than Plato, modern science did not come into its own until Plato's Pythagorean confidence in the mathematical nature of the world returned with Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. For instance, Aristotle, relying on a theory of opposites that is now only of historical interest, rejected Plato's attempt to match the Platonic Solids with the elements -- while Plato's expectations are realized in mineralogy and crystallography, where the Platonic Solids occur naturally.Plato and Aristotle, Up and Down-Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.


    This is the first introduction then that is very important to me about what is perceived as a mathematical framework. So it is not such an effort to think about our world and think hmmmm.... a mathematical abstract of our reality is there to be discovered. I first noticed this attribute in Pascal's triangle.

    Nineteenth Century Geometry by Roberto Torretti

    The sudden shrinking of Euclidean geometry to a subspecies of the vast family of mathematical theories of space shattered some illusions and prompted important changes in our the philosophical conception of human knowledge. Thus, for instance, after these nineteenth-century developments, philosophers who dream of a completely certain knowledge of right and wrong secured by logical inference from self-evident principles can no longer propose Euclidean geometry as an instance in which a similar goal has proved attainable. The present article reviews the aspects of nineteenth century geometry that are of major interest for philosophy and hints in passing, at their philosophical significance.


    While I looked further into the world of Pythagorean developments I wondered how such an abstract could have ever lead to the world of non-euclidean geometries. There is this progression of the geometries that needed to be understood. It included so many people that we only now acknowledge the greatest names but it is in the exploration of "theoretical excellence" that we gain access to the spirituality's of the mathematical world.

    "I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered."Donald (H. S. M.) Coxeter


    While some would wonder what value this exploration into such mathematical abstracts, how could we describe for ourselves the ways things would appear at such levels microscopically reduced, has an elemental quality to it? Yes, I have gone to one extreme, and understand, it included so many different mathematics, how could we ever understand this effort and assign it's rightful place in history? Theoretics then, is this effort?

    How Strange the elements of our world?


    The crystalline state is the simplest known example of a quantum , a stable state of matter whose generic low-energy properties are determined by a higher organizing principle and nothing else. Robert Laughlin




    This illustration depicts eight of the allotropes (different molecular configurations) that pure carbon can take:

    a) Diamond
    b) Graphite
    c) Lonsdaleite
    d) Buckminsterfullerene (C60)
    e) C540
    f) C70
    g) Amorphous carbon
    h) single-walled carbon nanotube


    Review of experiments

    Graphite exhibits elastic behaviour and even improves its mechanical strength up to the temperature of about 2500 K. Measured changes in ultrasonic velocity in graphite after high temperature creep shows marked plasticity at temperatures above 2200 K [16]. From the standpoint of thermodynamics, melting is a phase transition of the first kind, with an abrupt enthalpy change constituting the heat of melting. Therefore, any experimental proof of melting is associated with direct recording of the temperature dependence of enthalpy in the neighbourhood of a melting point. Pulsed heating of carbon materials was studied experimentally by transient electrical resistance and arc discharge techniques, in millisecond and microsecond time regime (see, e.g., [17, 18]), and by pulsed laser heating, in microsecond, nanosecond and picosecond time regime (see, e.g., [11, 19, 20]). Both kind of experiments recorded significant changes in the material properties (density, electrical and thermal conductivity, reflectivity, etc. ) within the range 4000-5000 K, interpreted as a phase change to a liquid state. The results of graphite irradiation by lasers suggest [11] that there is at least a small range of temperatures for which liquid carbon can exist at pressure as low as 0.01 GPa. The phase boundaries between graphite and liquid were investigated experimentally and defined fairly well.

    Saturday, September 22, 2007

    E8 and the Blackhole

    "I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered."Donald (H. S. M.) Coxeter


    There are two reasons that having mapped E8 is so important. The practical one is that E8 has major applications: mathematical analysis of the most recent versions of string theory and supergravity theories all keep revealing structure based on E8. E8 seems to be part of the structure of our universe.

    The other reason is just that the complete mapping of E8 is the largest mathematical structure ever mapped out in full detail by human beings. It takes 60 gigabytes to store the map of E8. If you were to write it out on paper in 6-point print (that's really small print), you'd need a piece of paper bigger than the island of Manhattan. This thing is huge.


    See:Pasquale Del Pezzo and E8 Origination?-Monday, March 19, 2007

    If I had thought there was a way to describe the "interior" of the blackhole, it would be by recognizing the dimensionality the blackhole had to offer. One had to know where to locate "this place in the natural world." If we had understood the energy values of the particle world colliding(that space and frame of reference, then what were we finding that such a place in dimensionality could exist in the natural world? Yoyu had to accept that there was dynamical moves that werre being defined as a possiility.

    Thus RHIC is in a certain sense a string theory testing machine, analyzing the formation and decay of dual black holes, and giving information about the black hole interior.The RHIC fireball as a dual black hole-Horatiu Nastase


    So what ways would allow us to do this, and this is part of the idea that came to me as I was thinking about the place where all possibilities could exist. Yet, what existed as "moduli form in the valleys" was being extended. So I am connecting other things here too.

    Monday, March 19, 2007

    Pasquale Del Pezzo and E8 Origination?

    "I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered."Donald (H. S. M.) Coxeter


    There are two reasons that having mapped E8 is so important. The practical one is that E8 has major applications: mathematical analysis of the most recent versions of string theory and supergravity theories all keep revealing structure based on E8. E8 seems to be part of the structure of our universe.

    The other reason is just that the complete mapping of E8 is the largest mathematical structure ever mapped out in full detail by human beings. It takes 60 gigabytes to store the map of E8. If you were to write it out on paper in 6-point print (that's really small print), you'd need a piece of paper bigger than the island of Manhattan. This thing is huge.


    Clifford of Asymptotia drew our attention to this for examination and gives further information and links with which to follow.

    He goes on to write,"Let’s not get carried away though. Having more data does not mean that you worked harder to get it. Mapping the human genome project involves a much harder task, but the analogy is still a good one, if not taken too far."

    Of course since the particular comment of mine was deleted there, and of course I am okay with that. It did not mean I could not carry on here. It did not mean that I was not speaking directly to the way these values in dimensional perspective were not being considered.

    Projective Geometries?

    A theorem which is valid for a geometry in this sequence is automatically valid for the ones that follow. The theorems of projective geometry are automatically valid theorems of Euclidean geometry. We say that topological geometry is more abstract than projective geometry which is turn is more abstract than Euclidean geometry.


    There had to be a route to follow that would lead one to think in such abstract spaces. Of course, one does not want to be divorced from reality. So one should not think that because the geometry of GR is understood, that you think nothing can come from the microseconds after the universe came into expression.

    At this point in the development, although geometry provided a common framework for all the forces, there was still no way to complete the unification by combining quantum theory and general relativity. Since quantum theory deals with the very small and general relativity with the very large, many physicists feel that, for all practical purposes, there is no need to attempt such an ultimate unification. Others however disagree, arguing that physicists should never give up on this ultimate search, and for these the hunt for this final unification is the ‘holy grail’. Michael Atiyah


    The Holy Grail sure comes up lots doesn't it:) Without invoking the pseudoscience that Peter Woit spoke of. I thought, if they could use Babar, and Alice then I could use the Holy Grail?

    See more info on Coxeter here.

    Like Peter I will have to address the "gut feelings" and the way Clifford expressed it. I do not want to practise pseudoscience as Peter is about the landscape.:)



    When ones sees the constituent properties of that Gossett polytope 421 in all it's colours, the complexity of that situation is quite revealing. Might we not think in the time of supergravity, gravity will become weak, in the matter constitutions that form.

    As in Neutrino mixing I am asking you to think of the particles as sound as well as think them in relation to the Colour of Gravity. If you were just to see grvaity in it's colourful design and what value that gravity in face of the photon moving within this gravitational field?

    We detect the resulting "wah-wah-wah" in properties of the neutrino that appear and disappear. For example, when neutrinos interact with matter they produce specific kinds of other particles.

    For example, when neutrinos interact with matter they produce specific kinds of other particles. Catch the neutrino at one moment, and it will interact to produce an electron. A moment later, it might interact to produce a different particle. "Neutrino mixing" describes the original mixture of waves that produces this oscillation effect.


    The "geometry of curvature" had to be implied in the outcome, from that quantum world? Yet at it's centre, what is realized? You had to be lead there in terms of particle research to know that you are arriving at the "crossover point." The superfluid does this for examination.

    5. Regular polytope: If you keep pulling the hypercube into higher and higher dimensions you get a polytope. Coxeter is famous for his work on regular polytopes. When they involve coordinates made of complex numbers they are called complex polytopes.

    Pasquale Del Pezzo, Duke of Cajanello, (1859–1936), was "the most Neapolitan of Neapolitan Mathematicians".

    He was born in Berlin (where his father was a representative of the Neapolitan king) on 2 May 1859. He died in Naples on 20 June 1936. His first wife was the Swedish writer Anne Charlotte Leffler, sister of the great mathematician Gösta Mittag-Leffler (1846-1927).

    At the University of Naples, he received first a law degree in 1880 and then in 1882 a math degree. He became a pre-eminent professor at that university, teaching Projective Geometry, and remained at that University, as rector, faculty president, etc.

    He was mayor of Naples starting in 1919, and he became a senator in the Kingdom of Naples.

    His scientific achievements were few, but they reveal a keen ingenuity. He is remembered particularly for first describing what became known as a Del Pezzo surface. He might have become one of the strongest mathematicians of that time, but he was distracted by politics and other interests.


    So what chance do we have, if we did not think this geometry was attached to processes that would unfold into the bucky ball or the fullerene of science. To say that the outcome had a point of view that is not popular. I do not count myself as attached to any intelligent design agenda, so I hope people will think I do not care about that.

    NATHAN MYHRVOLD

    I found the email debate between Smolin and Susskind to be quite interesting. Unfortunately, it mixes several issues. The Anthropic Principle (AP) gets mixed up with their other agendas. Smolin advocates his CNS, and less explicitly loop quantum gravity. Susskind is an advocate of eternal inflation and string theory. These biases are completely natural, but in the process the purported question of the value of the AP gets somewhat lost in the shuffle. I would have liked more discussion of the AP directly


    See here for more information

    So all the while you see the complexity of that circle and how long it took a computer to map it, it has gravity in it's design, whether we like to think about it or not?

    But of course we are talking about the symmetry and any thing less then this would have been assign a matter state, as if symmetrical breaking would have said, this is the direction you are going is what we have of earth?

    Isostatic Adjustment is Why Planets are Round?

    While one thinks of "rotational values" then indeed one would have to say not any planets is formed in the way the sun does. Yet, in the "time variable understanding" of the earth, we understand why it's shape is not exactly round.



    Do you think the earth and moon look round if your were considering Grace?

    On the moon what gives us perspective when a crater is formed to see it's geological structure? It's just not a concern of the mining industry, as to what is mined on other orbs, but what the time variable reveals of the orbs structure as well.



    Clementine color ratio composite image of Aristarchus Crater on the Moon. This 42 km diameter crater is located on the corner of the Aristarchus plateau, at 24 N, 47 W. Ejecta from the plateau is visible as the blue material at the upper left (northwest), while material excavated from the Oceanus Procellarum area is the reddish color to the lower right (southeast). The colors in this image can be used to ascertain compositional properties of the materials making up the deep strata of these two regions. (Clementine, USGS slide 11)

    See more here

    Monday, September 11, 2006

    Donald Coxeter: The Man Who Saved Geometry

    "I’m a Platonist — a follower of Plato — who believes that one didn’t invent these sorts of things, that one discovers them. In a sense, all these mathematical facts are right there waiting to be discovered."Harold Scott Macdonald (H. S. M.) Coxeter


    Some would stop those from continuing on, and sharing the world behind the advancements in geometry. I am very glad that I can move from the Salvador Dali image of the crucifixtion, to know, that minds engaged in the "pursuites of ideas" as they may "descend from heaven," may see in a man like Donald Coxeter, the way and means to have ideas enter his mind and explode in sociological functions? Hmmmm. what does that mean?



    Geometry is a branch of mathematics that deals with points, lines, angles, surfaces and solids. One of Coxeter’s major contributions to geometry was in the area of dimensional analogy, the process of stretching geometrical shapes into higher dimensions. He is also famous for “Coxeter groups,” the inversive distance between two disjoint circles (or spheres).


    It is not often we see where our views are shared with other people?

    I was doing some reading over at Lubos Motl's blog besides just getting the link for Michio Kaku article, I noticed this one too.

    You might think the loss of geometry | like the loss of, say, Latin would pass virtually unnoticed. This is the thing about geometry: we no more notice it than we notice the curve of the earth. To most people, geometry is a grade school memory of fumbling with protractors and memorizing the Pythagorean theorem. Yet geometry is everywhere. Coxeter sees it in honeycombs, sun°owers, froth and sponges. It's in the molecules of our food (the spearmint molecule is the exact geometric reaction of the caraway molecule), and in the computer-designed curves of a Mercedes-Benz. Its loss would be immeasurable, especially to the cognoscenti at the Budapest conference, who forfeit the summer sun for the somnolent glow of an overhead projector. They credit Coxeter with rescuing an art form as important as poetry or opera. Without Coxeter's geometry | as without Mozart's symphonies or Shakespeare's plays | our culture, our understanding of the universe,would be incomplete.


    Now you know what fascination I have with the geometries, as they have moved us towards the comprehension of GR and Reimann? Could Einstein have ever succeeded without him?

    Michael Atiyah:
    At this point in the development, although geometry provided a common framework for all the forces, there was still no way to complete the unification by combining quantum theory and general relativity. Since quantum theory deals with the very small and general relativity with the very large, many physicists feel that, for all practical purposes, there is no need to attempt such an ultimate unification. Others however disagree, arguing that physicists should never give up on this ultimate search, and for these the hunt for this final unification is the ‘holy grail’.


    Without stealing the limelight from Donald, I wanted to put the thinking of Michael Atiyah along side of him too. So you understand that those who speak about the "physics" have things underlying this process which help hold them to the very fabric of thinking.

    Some do not know of "this geometric process" I speak, where such manifestation arise from the very essence of the thinking soul. If you began to learn about yourself you would know that such abstractions are much closer to the "pure thought" then any would have realized.

    Some meditate to get to this essence. Some know, that in having gone through a journey of discovery that they will find the very patterns sealed within each of the souls.

    How does it arise? You had to follow this journey through the "muddle maze" of the dreaming mind to know that patterns in you can direct the vision of things according to what you yourself already do inherently.

    Now some of you "know," don't you, with regards to what I am saying? I spoke often of "Liminocetric structures" just to help you along, and help you realize that the sociological standing of exchange houses many forms of thinking that we had gained previously. Why as a soul of the "thinking mind" should you loose this part of yourself?

    So you begin with the "Platonic Forms" and look for the soccer ball/football? THis process resides at many levels and Dirac was very instrumental in speaking about the basis of the geometer and his vision of things. Along side of course the algebraic way.


    (Picture credit: AIP Emilio Sergè Visual Archives)


    This is very real, and not so abstract that you may have departed form the real world to say, you have lost touch? Do you think only "in a square box" and cannot percieve anything beyond the "condensive thoughts and model apprehensions" which hold you to your own design?

    Maybe? :)

    But the world is vast in terms of discovery, that the question of mathematics again draws us back too, was "Mathematics invented or discovered?" So "this premise" as a question formed and with it "the roads" that lead to inquiry?

    Al these forms of geometrics leading to question about "Quantum geometry" and how would such a cosmological world reveal to the thinkingmind "the microscopic" as part of the dynamical world of our everyday living?

    Only a cynic casts the diversions and illusions to what is real. Because they cannot inherently deal with the "strange language of geometrics" that issues forth in model apprehensions. This is the basis from which Einstein solved the problems of his day.

    But the question is what geometrics could ever reside at such a microscopic level?