Richard,

This all very interesting but not to the point.

Aage Petersen for example writes:
"Both in the calculus and in quantum physics,
The description problems were interesting
Primarily because they were non-trivial."

The "description problems" once again allude to Bohr's concerns about 
"visualization." This was and still is addressable from my original 
email. Aesthetics has nothing to do with it.

'But still after Einstein poets write
As though Mrs. Clarke and Mrs. Leibnitz
Pass letters in the womb,
And something wonderful and hellish is about to be born.
But the poets are too protestant to name it.'

CP

Richard Seddon wrote:
> CP
>
> Most old members of this list know that I do quantum chemistry.  Yes, I must
> admit, that, I regularly and insensitively commit mathematics.  I even read
> journals which use mathematics to describe natural processes.  Perhaps
> another reading of "The Cantos" will propitiate my sins.  Better still, how
> about reading Charles Olson who, I believe, claimed to marry cosmology and
> poetry. (BTW, the only thing I have read by Olson is his collection
> "Archeologist of Morning" so don't hold me to Olson)
>
> Just as the color red makes no claim to blue, science and mathematics make
> no inherent claim to aesthetic sensitivity.  I may look at a picture of
> earth from orbit or look through a microscope at a paramecium and think of
> how wonderful it looks, but this is a judgment of my capacity to appreciate
> beauty.  I may look at a certain equation, the Schrödinger's comes to mind,
> and think of its elegance, but the reality is that it is simply a linear
> partial second order differential equation which describes all that we can
> know about an electron or other particle in a quantum state.  Planck's
> constant is an wondrous thing but actually it is simply the physical
> constant (a number) that I multiply the frequency of a particle's wave
> function by to get the energy of that particle.  It has no more inherent
> call to beauty than pi, the number I multiply the diameter of a circle by in
> order to get its circumference.  The idea that squaring half that same
> diameter and also multiplying it times pi somehow gives me the area of that
> very circle may seem marvelous but it is simply my mind being boggled and
> does not alter the fact that pi is simply a number (a physical constant).
>
>  
> Rick Seddon
> Portales, NM
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com 
> Version: 8.0.176 / Virus Database: 270.10.1/1868 - Release Date: 12/29/2008 10:48 AM
>
>