| 19 April, 2009 |
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Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth. I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives. A technique succeeds in mathematical physics, not by a clever trick, or a happy accident, but because it expresses some aspect of a physical truth. The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame. It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view, or strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an exercise for your kill-file. Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong? Live TV died in the late 1950s, electronic bulletin boards came along in the mid-1980s, meaning there was about a 25-year gap when it was difficult to put your foot in your mouth and have people all across the country know about it. network: anything reticulated or decussated, with interstices between the intersections. There is nothing more practical than a good theory. He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. Nature is earlier than man, but man is earlier than natural science. Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature. It is fatal to be right when the rest of the world is wrong. A thing can be true and still be desperate folly. Beware of too much laughter, for it deadens the mind and produces oblivion. Every culture has its distinctive and normal system of government. Yours is democracy, moderated by corruption. Ours is totalitarianism, moderated by assassination. The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into quicksand. The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments. What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death. He is one of those peple who would be enormously improved by deathH. The only completely consistent people are the dead. No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase "being born" is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while "dying" means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remains unchanged. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world. We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing exists. And however futile each individual act of courage or generosity, self-sacrifice or grace-it still proves the thing exists. Each act adds to the fund. It needs replenishment. Not only because evil flourishes, and is, most indefensibly, defended. But because goodness is no longer a respectable aim in life. The hound of hell, envy, has driven it from the house. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations. My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can. The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be. You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed. My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future. Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God. Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives. God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically. You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality. There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer. The most extensive computation known has been conducted over the last billion years on a planet-wide scale: it is the evolution of life. The power of this computation is illustrated by the complexity and beauty of its crowning achievement, the human brain. I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad. If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. ...it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art. The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life. How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction equation] . . . Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or swim for a few years in trying to derive it. That would have been merely an instance of the way great mathematicians since the very beginnings of mathematical research have effortlessly maintained their superiority over ordinary mortals. There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities-- potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry-- that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics. What a price we pay for experience, when we must sell our youth to buy it. If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience. We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit on a hot stove lid again--and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones. Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards. |
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