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Other kinds of coding

Had I not studied mathematics, I would probably never have written the essay that follows. I wrote it 17 years ago but I decided to post it this holiday season. I hope you enjoy it.

We were on our way home from daycare on a […]

Ideals in the body politic

I have spent quite a bit of time, using much of the information provided in these posts, to argue that mathematics is in a unique position to show us that our thoughts (the silent language in our heads) that appear to be produced in the privacy of our imagination, have some independent reality. By […]

New strategies, new circuitries, new mathematics

I came upon an MIT News article about the work of Ila Fiete who studies brain functions, like the neurological processes that govern navigational reasoning about our surroundings. Fiete uses computational and mathematical tools. Her interest in biology, and her respect for the “aesthetic to thinking mathematically,” (as she put it) led her to […]

From coin flipping to branching universes

A recent column in Quanta Magazine, by theorist Seam Carroll, highlights the far reaching implications of the role played by probability theory in quantum mechanics. Carroll’s intention is to bring into focus the need, which does seem to exist, for us to understand what, exactly, those probabilities are telling us. In quantum mechanics, the […]

The monad, autopoiesis and Christmas

If you were listening, the season brought the usual surge of Christmas music through all manner of electromagnetic transmission, wired and wireless, causing me to remember again my mild preoccupation with one tune in particular, namely – Do You Hear What I Hear? For the past few years I found myself listening more closely […]

Timeless geometry and what we say time is

Another article about physics and mathematics by Natalie Wolchover, published in both Wired and Quanta Magazine, got my attention because it began like this:

In late August, paleontologists reported finding the fossil of a flattened turtle shell that “was possibly trodden on” by a dinosaur, whose footprints spanned the rock layer directly above. The […]

Building objects from relations: physics and the monad

Quanta Magazine recently published an interview with physicist and author Lee Smolin. Smolin talked about his most recent book, Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum, and the influence that Gottfried Leibniz, has had on the perspective that Smolin most recently adopted. Seventeenth century polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, known for […]

Truth, time, and mathematics

A special September issue of Scientific American is organized around questions about what we seem to know, and how or why we may be deceived about the nature of reality. This special September issue has the title: Truth Lies and Uncertainty. No doubt the editors are inspired, to some extent, by the challenges to […]

What does the mind’s eye see?

My attention was recently brought to a discussion of grid cells and spatial imagery as they relate to cognitive strengths in dyslexic individuals. The discussion takes place in the book The Dyslexic Advantage by Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide, and it amplified many of the thoughts I have expressed about the biological aspect of […]

Mathematical Universes

Physics theoretician Nima Arkani-Hamed, at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, has recently suggested that maybe space and time are not what we think they are. In a recent interview with Natalie Wolchover, for a New Yorker article, he expressed renewed interest in a point made by Richard Feynman in 1964. [1] Feynman […]