Alice's adventures in algebra: Wonderland solved

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, Dave, mucho thanks....

It reinforces my belief that 'imaginary numbers' in AtD are also satirized as part of incipient modernity...being caught in that phrase of Marx's pointed to in AtD: "all that is solid melts into air"..

--- On Sun, 3/7/10, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
> Subject: RE: Alice's adventures in algebra: Wonderland solved
> To: "'Dave Monroe'" <against.the.dave at gmail.com>, "'pynchon -l'" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, March 7, 2010, 10:27 AM
> Dave Monroe pointed to:
> 
> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427391.600-alices-adventures-in-alge
> bra-wonderland-solved.html
> ---
> Thanks, Dave! A very good article, and in passing (obAtD) a
> good sketch of
> how Hamilton's quaternions were received at their
> introduction. She's
> absolutely right that almost everything else Dodgson wrote
> was dull -- that
> he needed a pinch of spite to be interesting.
> 
> (Saw Burton's Alice yesterday. Good, not great, with some
> "updating" that
> didn't offend me but didn't add much) 
> 
> -Monte 
> 
>