Long time, no post…. but I could not resist mentioning one of the most beautiful things I’ve read this year, Freeman Dyson’s esssay on birds and frogs, written for his Einstein Public Lecture. Dyson is one of the true grand old men of science who has made seminal contributions to many fields of mathematics and physics, ranging from number theory to quantum field theory. SF fans might know him from as the inventor of the Dyson sphere concept. He also worked on Project Orion, that gloriously mad Cold War lets-go-to-stars-riding-on-nuclear-explosions atompunk dream.
In his essay — written for his Dyson explains how he thinks there are two kinds of mathematicians: birds, who explore new horizons and see how concepts fit together, and frogs who are interested in nearby insects and flowers but burrow deep in the mud. He argues convincingly how both are needed, and presents some delightful mathematical miracles (including the role of complex numbers in quantum mechanics, and a wonderfully strange idea to tackle the Riemann hypothesis using quasicrystals) and personal memories along the way. He also has a few things to say about string theory…
I’m definitely a frog, and a small frog at that. But getting a glimpse of the big picture through the eyes of someone like Dyson reminded me of why I love mathematics so much.
Sinut on haastettu meemiin: http://peten.vuodatus.net/blog/1789070
Found your blog…just browsing. This one stopped. Just reading one book,called invisible acts…It just say page 53.
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… Kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. A.E