Back to AtD: ye olde Reimann Hypothesis

[Mark Kohut]

in Visions of Infinity, Ian Stewart writes this: "Nevertheless, the world of primes is not ruled by
anarchy. In 1835 Adolphe Quetelet astounded his contemporaries by finding genuine mathematical regularities
in social events that depended on conscious human choices or the intervention of fate: births, marriages, deaths,
suicides. The patterns were statistical"......
"This is how statisticians extract order from individual free will. At much the same time, mathematicains began to
realise that the same trick works for primes. Although each is a rugged individualist, collectively they conform to
the rule of [statistical] law. There are hidden patterns."
 
I am reminded of Slothrop and the bomb patterns, anyone else?
 
Summary of text: in 1859, Reimann picked up an old idea [of Euler's] and defined the zeta function...... it provided
genuine insight into the primes, however there was on catch.  Although the exactness of the formula could be proved
its most important consequences depended on a simple statement about the zeta function, which could not prove--and
which we still can't.
 
I suspect Pynchon likes that unprovenness. An analogue of ultimate metaphysical mystery?
 
 
 
 
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