Blind watchers, ch8

Remember what I said about metaphors in this book, and how they are over-used?

Try abused. Like the poem described by Billy Collin in his poem on poetry analysis:
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

The chapter is called "Expanding Fog". I guess that constitutes a fair warning?

But here are some quotes:

I am not odd enough to think that just any old mathematical equation is beautiful; those really weird people who think that all equations are beautiful are know as mathematicians.

So glad you made the distinction, sir.

No, I don't like all equations, for some leave me with a numb, empty feeling inside, like one has after listening to a Barry Manilow song.

lol WTH? Okay, you are "normal", we get it, can we move on now?

What a wonderful world, where we can enjoy both an artistic interpretation and a mathematical description of the same scene!" (This is on a J. M. W Tuner painting of of a "storm-tossed sea".

First of all: you geek. You have failed to convince us of your normality.

Secondly: painting does NOT equal math equations. I'm enough of a geek to admit that both has their aesthetics, but a scene of storm-tossed sea can't be summed up with merely an equation about hydrodynamics. Even if we want to reduce it to symbols and numbers (think about it) the number of things in nature that's represented in the painting requires at least another equation on aerodynamics (wind), saturation curves (humidity and rain), and light intensity (the painting is not a canvas painted black all over, therefore there is light). The foam in the sea can be described with equations, yes, and so can the waves themselves (simple harmonic motion with vectors where they break). The spray of water can be described with more vectors as the droplets travel their parabolic paths.

Yes, the entire scene can be described in math, but I think Kolb has it grossly simplified. The amount of stuff that you can put into one average 8.5 x 11 inches of canvas can take up to PAGES of equation to describe. And as we all know, repeat with me now, Prof. Kolbs, since you're so fond of repeating things: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

As you can tell, that bit really bothered me.

Onwards!

The word "fog" is used too many times in this chapter, though "blind" is not used as much. The "expansion of the universe is an expansion of space, not an expansion of galaxies into space" got very, very annoying. Kolb is no doubt one of those professors who thinks that repetition is the key to life, the universe and everything. ("Reason conquering sense....")(Gaaaah make him stop! Please!)

I like the paragraph about how aesthetics can drive science though, because sometimes the moment when you figure something out after a long period of hard word, the solution does look beautiful.

The stars seem to reach out and seduce all sorts of people.

We GET the idea that the stars are fascinating (otherwise we wouldn't be reading this book), but this is laying it on a bit thick (well it's been a bit thick all the way through, but this makes it even...thicker?) Stop with the succubi analogy already. (It wouldn't be so bad if he varied his lines, or embellished that line a little with something else instead of having it stick out like that but no....)

I've also discovered that I don't like Hubble as much anymore, but the train (Kolb seems to really like trains) thing was amusing. The bit about the habit of mentioning astonomical discoveries in New York Times made me imagine one of those spectrum chart things next to the stats on Wall Street.

Most things you were taught in high school geometry is true only for flat spaces.

ZOMG and the earth is NOT FLAT! What EVER shall we do?

I'll owning up to like to play with the mental visualization games though (one dimension circle on two dimension space, two area on three dimension space, etc. I had to grapple with the difference between the fourth dimension and the fourth spatial dimension though, since they're apparently not the same thing). (Knowing our universe has a center in the fourth spatial dimension is cool, though.)

In conclusion?

Foooooooooooooooog.