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Alphaville Books <[log in to unmask]>
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- Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine <[log in to unmask]>
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Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:57:09 -0500
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P.S. Olson brought me to Whitehead's Process and Reality many years ago. 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
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