mandell said:
more to the point if the number patterns and Rodins work and number patterns represent the flow of energy in the this universe, I find the relationship to the wreath significant! does this deserve more consideration.
If this does not make sense to you I suggest looking at his work with more of an open mind-
I think maybe he's got something going on, but I'm not sure what and I was initially put off a bit by:
...all intelligence comes from a person's name
...everything he had read in both the Bahai scriptures and other religious text spoke of nine being the omni-potent number.
Nature is expressing herself with numbers.
NUMBERS ARE REAL AND ALIVE
So, what's really up with all that? Why is he busting out onto the public stage with this? What does he want from the general public?
My attitude is just to wait and watch to see what happens next. At this point in my growth, I don't yet have any reason to believe that numbers are anything other than a sub-class of language, itself, that have no use separated from any 'bits' of actual reality.
So, until I see otherwise, I'd be careful about getting excited about all this. I tend to defer to the cautions of two great logicians: Lewis Carroll and Abelard.
Do you remember Alice in Wonderland? When Humpty Dumpty tries to assign purely arbitrary meanings to certain words, Alice challenges him:
[quote author=Alice in Wonderland]
Humpty:
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
Alice:
"The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things."
Humpty:
"The question is, who is to be master - that's all."
From Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
[/quote]
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and a photographer).
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll
[quote author=Abelard]
The approach to teaching mathematics and other languages is profoundly unsound, but the habits are deeply ingrained.
Numbers have no magical essence. Numbers are no different in nature or type than any other words. ‘Two’ just means “object and another object”. Numbers are words, they are not more than words and they are not less than words. There is no essential difference between language and mathematics. To attempt to teach mathematics as somehow separated from language is poor and confused pedagogy.
An ‘object’ is just what any individual human decides at that moment is an ‘object’. Objects do not somehow ‘exist in their own right in the world’. It just happens to be convenient and useful for humans to separate out and focus upon ‘bits’ of that unified reality.
Fortunately these difficulties, and differences or changes, are not so great that we cannot use words with pragmatic effect. Despite the problems, we can communicate sufficiently effectively to enable and enhance our everyday life and survival, but we are wise to keep in mind the very real limitations of language.
We may proceed by not worrying too much about the inevitable inaccuracy of all language usage, thus accepting a generalised relaxation of rigour. That is, by accepting sufficient similarity as a replacement for any ambition to some unattainable ‘total accuracy’ or ‘equality’.
There is no great number in the sky. Kronecker, another great mathematician said of mathematics, “god made the integers, all else was made by man”.[1]
I assert that Kronecker under-estimated humankind and over estimated numbers.
1-Barrow, John D. Pi in the Sky – Counting, thinking and being, 1993, Penguin Books, 0140231099; page 188
[/quote]
Abelard, originally called 'Pierre le Pallet' [Pierre (Peter) Abelard of Le Pallet] was born in 1079, in the little village of Le Pallet, a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France, about 10 miles east of Nantes, in Brittany, lying on the River Sèvre Nantaise. His wife, Heloise, became the very wise abbess of Le Paraclet.
Peter Abelard (Lt: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; Fr: Pierre Abélard) (1079 – April 21, 1142) was a medieval French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician. The story of his affair with and love for Héloïse has become legendary. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary describes him as "the keenest thinker and boldest theologian of the 12th Century".
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Abelard
Other quotes that may or may not be interesting in this context:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’.
Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922, preface.
No need to multiply entities without cause - the simplest explanation or strategy tends to be the best one. When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, select the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question.
Occam's razor (also spelled: Ockham)
_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor
