Back to AtD Zeta functions

[Paul Mackin]

On 7/15/2012 1:27 PM, bandwraith at aol.com wrote:
> I think you're making too much of a demon out of math- maybe setting 
> up too much of a dichotomy. Numbers don't kill... I think that such a 
> dichotomy is a natural reaction to the power of mathematics as it has 
> helped create the world we inhabit, for better or worse. But 
> "imaginary" or complex numbers weren't discovered (or created by us- 
> take your pick) until the early 16th century- plenty of killing, 
> empire, slavery, etc., before that. Making the argument that sectarian 
> differences or economics, or that our Darwinian nature are the roots 
> of our social problems, I think, would be comprable 
> over-simplifications. In fact, it would not be impossible to make the 
> opposite argument, that logic, mathematics and science have done more 
> than anything to ameliorate whatever inherent vices we carry that lead 
> us to atrocity. An argument I am not making, but which could be made. 
> The exponential aspect of mathematical and scientific knowledge and 
> its multiplicative effect on killing efficiency, however, can't be 
> denied.
>
> The question might be better framed by asking: are mathematics and 
> science neutral? Is anything we do neutral?  Plato would probabIy say 
> that the truth lies somewhere beyond our ability to corrupt it. I 
> think what Pynchon might be getting at is how supposedly neutral 
> "truth" is inevitably subverted. The process is supposed to prevent 
> that, but the unvarnished truth doesn't quite make it to the light of 
> day, or not for long. But beyond all the bogosity in ATD there are 
> some hints of mathematical beauty, real or imagined.

Yashmeen seems to have out platonicked Plato when it came to 
mathematics.  As she explains to her adoptive father a couple hundred 
pages earlier, she sees it as "a reflection of some less-accessible 
reality, through close study of which  one might perhaps learn to pass 
beyond the difficult given world."

This must be what first turned on Cyprian.

P
>
>  ,
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> To: Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>.
> Sent: Sun, Jul 15, 2012 11:47 am
> Subject: Re: Back to AtD Zeta functions
>
>
>
> Very helpful, Prashant and it leads me to my textual speculation based on
> TRP using it here, as he does almost everything, as a metaphor.....
>
> One level (specualtive): the imaginary is the future that is being 
> more than hinted at here.
>
> More speculative second level: imaginary numbers are, by definition, 
> not real.....it is
> unreality---unnatural nation-states, nations BEYOND natural 
> formations, math beyond
> what we need to get the world---that will kill.
>
>
>
>
> From: Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com>
> To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sunday, July 15, 2012 9:25 AM
> Subject: Re: Back to AtD Zeta functions
>
>
>
> First we're gonna need complex numbers, made of a real part (normal 
> numbers) plus an imaginary part. Imaginary numbers are defined by 
> multiples of i=squareroot(-1). Imagine a 2D graph, the vertical axis 
> marked with multiples of i and the horizontal axis with real numbers. 
> So on this 2D graph we can define a complex number as a point. Call 
> such a point s = \sigma + \rho, \sigma and \rho being real and 
> imaginary numbers resp.
>
>
> Since it takes real and imaginary inputs, and we plot the output in 
> the third dimension, the Riemann Zeta function can be visualised as a 
> surface sitting above the complex number graph; that's what you saw, 
> Mark (see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann_zeta_function for 
> the same thing with magnitude represented as colour).  If I have a RZ 
> function, writing R as a function of s as R(s), the zeroes are the 
> values of s for which R(s)=0.  The Riemann Hypothesis (unproven) 
> states that the zeroes of the RZ function have real part 1/2. 
> Formally, R(1/2 + \rho) = 0. This gives you a line on the surface of 
> the RZ function (known as the critical line) along which the zeroes 
> are hypothesised to lie. That wasn't too bad, right?
>
>
> Verifying this hypothesis is notoriously hard.
>
>
> On 15 July 2012 21:27, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> "Except that this one's horizontal and drawn on a grid of latitude and 
> longitude,
> instead of rel vs imaginary values---where Riemann said that all the 
> zeroes of the
> Beta function will be found."
>
> p. 937 Don't know enough math to have a feel for Zeta functions but 
> Wolfram's
> maths guide online shows Beta functions kinda graphed in three 
> dimensions,
> with raised sections, waves, folds etc....
>
> And all I can associate at the moment are the raised maps, showing 
> land formations,
> and the phrase
>
> History is a step-function.
>
> Anyone, anyone? Bueller?
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