I think this pre-cedent to Frank's reply didn't make the list.
-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how we behave?) Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2019 11:02:14 -0700 From: Steven A Smith <[email protected]> To: Frank Wimberly <[email protected]> Frank - Where do you get your understanding of a right triangle (originally)? Do you NOT first experience a large number of examples of imperfect ones, and only then seek out or adopt from others a mathematical formalism to describe a right triangle in it's ideal/abstract? I had split a lot of firewood and cut a lot of pie and contemplated the similarities and differences among the resulting bits of them before I saw my first geometry book. I didn't have any trouble recognizing acute, oblique, right triangles in the (also not perfect, but closer to) geometry book and having some embodied understanding of them *long* before I began learning an axiomatic encoding/manipulation of the geometry of points, lines, planes, angles, conic sections, etc. This may be (partly) my intuitive nature dominating, but Lakoff/Nunez make a pretty strong case in "Where Mathematics Comes From" for all understanding grounding in our embodied minds/sensoria. Have you read them? I think they were "the rage" around 2000ish. I believe that the realization that "If you measure close enough, they are not right triangles" and similar awarenesses of the discrepancy between an idealized (mathematical) description and the everyday examples that they offer an archetype for, is entirely /post hoc/. Is this where Plato and Aristotle begin to tussle? If whales are as sentient as many believe, I would bet that even if they have a geometry that is isomorphic to ours, it would superficially be somewhat different than our own, probably grounded in more complex manifolds (to reference another thread here) than our own preference for the euclidean plane and the occasional idealized sphere (thus our love of spherical cows). Sure, they may have an abstract notion of the euclidean plane (the boundary between ocean and atmosphere or ocean and seafloor) but probably are hugely more aware/interested in the 3D distributions of density, pressure, salinity, etc. of their watery embedding than we ever were. Pilots and meteorologists and scuba divers might have a glimmer of how sea creatures perceive the basic fundament they live in, and our formalized geometries might well eventually line up if we've both elaborated them enough. My speculation is that cetaceans (and other sentient ocean-going creatures) probably register their experiences more in elliptical spaces and perhaps more minkowskian as well since the scale of the speed of sound (to the extent that is their dominant sense of distant objects) is close enough to their physical scale and their mobility. I'm not sure what type of physical environment would be perceived Lobachevskiian/Hyperbolic.. It seems like the kind of fiction Physicist Robert Forward might coin. - Steve > I personally don't relate tangible, physical objects to mathematical > ones because you get into Hywel(RIP) territory. "If you measure it > carefully enough it's not a right triangle. There are no right > triangles". > > ----------------------------------- > Frank Wimberly > > My memoir: > https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly > > My scientific publications: > https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 > > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > On Sat, Mar 9, 2019, 12:07 AM Nick Thompson > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > So a shroud is a manifold but not all manifolds are shrouds? > > > > N > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:*Friam [mailto:[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly > *Sent:* Friday, March 08, 2019 8:54 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we how > we behave?) > > > > It's something you can move around on in a continuous way? > > ----------------------------------- > Frank Wimberly > > My memoir: > https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly > > My scientific publications: > https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 > > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > > > On Fri, Mar 8, 2019, 8:52 PM Nick Thompson > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > wrote: > > I am sure it helps a lot of people; just not me. > > > > I need a metaphor. > > > > Nick > > > > Nicholas S. Thompson > > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > > Clark University > > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > > *From:*Friam [mailto:[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>] *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly > *Sent:* Friday, March 08, 2019 8:43 PM > *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we > how we behave?) > > > > Succinctly, and I may leave something out, a manifold is a > topological space for which there is a homeomorphism between > every open set and an open set in Rn for some n. More > concretely, lines and surfaces are manifolds but things get > complicated in higher dimensions. That probably doesn't help. > > ----------------------------------- > Frank Wimberly > > My memoir: > https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly > > My scientific publications: > https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 > > Phone (505) 670-9918 > > > > On Fri, Mar 8, 2019, 8:27 PM Nick Thompson > <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Lee, > > Just to bend the thread a bit further, is "excess meaning" > a term of art for > you? It seems very close to the term "surplus meaning" > which was used in a > famous article assigned to all Psychology graduate > students in the sixties > on the distinction between hypothetical constructs and > intervening > variables. Wondering if your term has the same meaning > and if it has a > life somewhere. > > As to the convex hull I went from there to the overturned > boat in NCIS and > thence to "manifold" which, when the term is deployed by > mathematicians I > always think of a shroud, like a blanket dropped over some > lumpy thing to > contain it, roughly. Which, now that I mention it, makes > me want to explain > wtf you mathematicians mean when you use the word manifold. > > If that's not a thoroughly bent thread I don't know what is. > > Nick > > Nicholas S. Thompson > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology > Clark University > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam [mailto:[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>] On Behalf Of > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Sent: Friday, March 08, 2019 7:04 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > Subject: [FRIAM] excess meaning alert? (was, Re: are we > how we behave?) > > Steve writes in relevant part: > > > My position is that I favor each and every one of us > taking whatever > > responsibility for understanding our own "convex hull" of > > capability/knowledge/intuition as we are capable of and > "managing" it > > to the best of our ability. > > The quotation marks around the phrase 'convex hull' and > the word 'managing' > presumably signal that they are being used non-literally, > and (I guess) > metaphorically. I would particularly like Steve, if he is > willing, to delve > into the intended metaphor in the first case. On the one > hand, lots of my > work uses more or less geometry; on the other, in lots of > my other work I > use metaphor; and I even think and write about metaphor. > So it's likely > that I'm taking the metaphor more seriously than intended. > > With that disclaimer: in the technical contexts I'm > familiar with, to pass > from something X to the convex hull of X has the effect of > (1) 'filling in > holes in X', in a well-defined manner that is (2) as > economical as possible > and (3) (therefore) unique. Which (if any) of those > properties are > reflected, and how, in the case that X is our > "capability/knowledge/intuition"? ... I could ramble on a > lot more but will > start with that. > > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to > unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. > Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. > Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
