Mid-morning. You just received a call from Scott who is doing a water test on his work next to the deck – he won’t be here until eleven which is fine. Carol has her Blue Ash Teachers’ Retirement Luncheon at one in Madeira and tomorrow you have lunch with Rich G. at the China Buffet on Mason-Montgomery Road. After checking BBC and your email accounts you have your exercises, a bit more dusting upstairs, and a trip to the local ACE Hardware on SR 42.
A cool cloudy morning and the leaves are out more and more beyond the northeast windows in the bedroom. The cat just climbed off my lap for a morning cleaning and a trip downstairs to see what Carol is up to (washing clothes). Last night we watched a DVRed a second regular episode of “Touch” on Fox. It is an interesting premise. An autistic-like boy who is into numbers and does not talk ‘knows’ things and gets his father to help solve the problems – a focus on the interconnections of individuals in a worldview. The numbers as I see it are as metaphors for ‘interactions’ that coincidently take place in the world at the same time. I like the feel of the program. Keith Sutherland plays a hack reporter and single father of the boy.
In some ways and on a different level it reminds me of an artistic film (1998) titled Pi about a numbers theorist and what happens to him when he realizes the ‘numerical pattern’ in God’s name. To me it is as if the world, the universe as we know it is not only a dream but it is a dream full of symbolic meaning built in. It would be as if when you died you were given the meaning of your life by playing the whole of life over again but this time looking at is as symbolic of something else – a reality that exists when you discover you and the world are not reality. Very cool. I like the concept.
Movies have been played on a similar theme, old man. Time to work off some calories – that breakfast of 281 + will do. Later, dude. Post. - Amorella
Later afternoon. You and Carol are at the northern end of Pine Hill Park next the cabin and looking west at the fully old wooded sixty-foot hill directly in front of the car. Carol is beginning her sister Linda’s, Four Blind Mice by James Patterson and you are still on the concept of numbers theories. – Amorella
Pythagoras comes to mind but I think I already have the wrong concept because when I look up ‘numbers theory’ in World Book [I still have not put my Britannica software on the drive] it doesn’t even mention him. Below are short selections from World Book.
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Number theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with the properties of the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. Number theory also deals with a type of natural numbers called prime numbers. A prime number, such as 2, 5, or 71, is a natural number that can be divided without a remainder only by itself and 1.
About 300 B.C., the Greek mathematician Euclid discussed prime numbers in his book Elements. He proved that there are infinitely many prime numbers. Euclid's Elements also stated a famous property of natural numbers called the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. This theorem states that every natural number can be written as a product of prime numbers in exactly one way.
The systematic study of number theory began with the work of the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in the 1600's. A landmark book in number theory was Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801), by the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. It developed a comprehensive theory of natural numbers, including a proof of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.
Contributor: Thomas Butts, Ph.D., Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Texas, Dallas.
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Fermat, Pierre de pronounced fehr MAH, (1601-1665), a French mathematician, founded modern number theory. He also helped invent analytic geometry and lay the foundation for calculus. He proved mathematically that the law for the refraction (bending) of light results from light's following the path that takes the shortest time. Fermat and the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal invented the theory of probability.
The ancient Greeks knew there are many whole-number solutions of the equation x2 + y2 = z2 (for example, 32 + 42 = 52). But in 1637, Fermat wrote in the margin of a book that there is no whole-number solution of xn + yn = zn if n is greater than 2. Fermat noted that he had found a wonderful proof of this fact, but that there was not enough room to write it down. No proof of "Fermat's last theorem" was found for more than 350 years. But in 1993, British mathematician Andrew Wiles announced that he had proved the theorem. Wiles published his complete proof, with certain corrections, in 1995.
Fermat was born on Aug. 17, 1601, in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, near Toulouse. He practiced law in Toulouse and studied mathematics for pleasure. He died on Jan. 12, 1665.
Contributor: Judith V. Grabiner, Ph.D., Professor, Mathematics and Science, Technology, and Society, Pitzer College.
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Pythagoras, pronounced pih THAG uhr uhs (580?-? B.C.), was a Greek philosopher and mathematician. Pythagoras was famous for formulating the Pythagorean theorem, but its principles were known earlier. The theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
As a philosopher, Pythagoras taught that number was the essence of all things. He mystically associated numbers with virtues, colors, and many other ideas. Pythagoras also taught that the human soul is immortal and that after death it moves into another living body, sometimes that of an animal. This idea is called transmigration of the soul. It appears in many early religions and is still the belief of many of the Hindu sects of India. Pythagoras may have obtained some of his ideas during travels in the East.
Pythagoras believed that the earth was spherical and that the sun, moon, and planets have movements of their own. His successors developed the idea that the earth revolved about a central fire. This belief anticipated the Copernican theory of the universe.
Little is known of Pythagoras' early life, but scholars believe that he was born on the island of Samos. In about 529 B.C., he settled in Crotona, Italy. Pythagoras founded a school (brotherhood) among the aristocrats of that city. The people of Crotona were suspicious of the Pythagorean brotherhood because its members were aristocrats. The people killed most of the members in a political uprising. Historians do not know whether Pythagoras left the city some time before the outbreak of violence and escaped death there, or was killed in it. The brotherhood of aristocrats was finally destroyed in the 400's B.C.
Contributor: S. Marc Cohen, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, University of Washington.
From: World Book Mac Software 2009
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Here you are. You learned something you did not know or had known generally and forgotten. World Book is not so detailed and scholarly as Encyclopedia Britannica but it works here. It would be better, if you do put Britannica on this MacAir flash drive also keep World Book. - Amorella
Above I underlined what was important about Pythagoras – and I wasn’t a incorrect as I first thought at least in terms of the TV show, “Touch”. I am not sure what “mystically associated” means exactly but I do have a ‘feel’ for it.
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Mystical[ly] – adjective [adverb]
1 of or relating to mystics or religious mysticism: the mystical experience.
• spiritually allegorical or symbolic; transcending human understanding: the mystical body of Christ.
• of or relating to ancient religious mysteries or other occult or esoteric rites: the mystical practices of the Pythagoreans.
• of hidden or esoteric meaning: a geometric figure of mystical significance.
2 inspiring a sense of spiritual mystery, awe, and fascination: the mystical forces of nature.
• concerned with the soul or the spirit, rather than with material things: the beliefs of a more mystical age. From: Oxford-American Mac software
And,
Associated – adjective
(of a person or thing) connected with something else: two associated events.
• (of a company) connected or amalgamated with another company or companies.
• Chemistry (of liquids) in which the molecules are held together by hydrogen bonding or other weak interaction. From: Ox-Am Mac software
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I look words up to make sure I am in the same ballpark as the writer; it is interesting how the modern editors of dictionaries parse associative meanings in a word. Let me see if I can find an example here.
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straight – adjective
1 extending or moving uniformly in one direction only; without a curve or bend: a long, straight road. Ox-Am Mac software
curve – noun
a line or outline that gradually deviates from being straight for some or all of its length: the parapet wall sweeps down in a bold curve. Ox-Am Mac software [my underlining]
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Now a look at my old logic lecture notes:
Rules for definitions
1. it should be neither to narrow nor broad
2. should not be circular
3. express in positive terms
4. it should be simple in explanation
The problem as I see it is in the associative (contextual) meaning of words. These are more of a problem for me than the general dictionary meanings of words. Were word meanings were set as numbers one could perhaps come up with ‘proofs’ for words too and no doubt all would be well. My meaning here is that numbers are like words and that proof or not something extra or missing is confined within the human element and not in numbers or words. Humans are the mystical, and I cannot think to separate heartansoulanmind for proper parsing.
You are now at Bed, Bath and Beyond and Carol is shopping for a dry protective pad for the bed Owen will be sleeping on, then a stop at Kroger’s for milk on the way home.
I find this strange that we ‘think’ as we do with ‘definitions’ (numbers and/or words) but because of the ‘human mystical-like’ element argument ensues; ‘moral argument’ for one example and ‘legal argument’ for another. The true-to-our-species answer is in us; individually and/or collectively, not in the numbers, words or arguments. I see this (in the book) as a problem for the Dead as well as the Living just as it is a human problem shown and generated through the characters in the theme and plot in the TV show, “Touch”. I suppose this is the reason I like the show as I do.
This took you some time to resolve in your mind, but for the present you are satisfied with the result. You are reminded of the old Pogo cartoon caption: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
We are not the enemy, Amorella. We are bred and educated not to be compatible with what we are because we do not look more closely within to see what we are. My hypothesis here is that we are not one individual we are four separate units of interest within one living human body – body, heart, soul and mind. The difference between the Living and the Dead as far as the books go is that they have heart, soul, and mind (consciousnesses) with a memory of body. We living have four points of consciousness not one. That’s what I read in the Merlyn’s Mind series of books.
Post when you are home. Think on this overnight and read it again in the morning before checking in. - Amorella
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