Just saying i

INDIVIDUAL

|

    INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

Imaginary	numbers
Social	care?

How 'divine' is the language of care?

'My impression was that algebra was less a subject than a practice into which one was inducted by the algebra priests after a series of mortifications. The letters and equations that the teacher drew on the board did not seem related to the numbers I had handled in other classrooms. For one thing, a problem in arithmetic was vertical, one number beneath another, and a problem in algebra, an equation, was horizontal. I felt as if in a permanent present, unable to see how the past and the future were joined. In Ulysses James Joyce writes that the present is the drain that the future goes down on its way to becoming the past.' p.12.

'The mathematician Alonzo Church, who taught Alan Turing, told another of his students, David Berlinski, "Any idiot can learn anything in mathematics. It requires only patience." I would sit with a pencil and paper trying to solve an algebra problem and sometimes go only so far before my mind would halt, because I had could used up what little I knew that might apply. It hadn't occurred to me to think of algebra as the bright boys and girls I had been among had thought of it, as a series of related procedures. They were constructing a map. I was collecting postcards from places where anxiety or incuriousness had kept me from leaving my hotel.' p.31.

(my emphasis)

Alec Wilkinson. (2022) A Divine Language. Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250168580/adivinelanguage/

Previously: math :: logic

Frayn - on maths

"Pure arithmetic is not about particular things but about particular relations between things. Algebra preserves an even loftier detachment from the world. It is not about relations between things - it about relations between relations. Numbers are variables that can be quantified in the physical world. Algebraic terms are variables that can be quantified in the world of numbers." pp.154-155.

Frayn, Michael (2006). The human touch: our part in the creation of a universe. 'Fingerhold', Chapter 5. London: Faber & Faber. pp.139-170.

individual

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

human	TOUCH
... human human  human  human human ...	Don't you dare! Yes, please do!

Measuring physical, mental and social space: A Political record

Since I was a child and my father used a metallic tape measure and my mission was to get it from the garage; I remember the sound as it was rolled out and uttered an occasional click. I took for granted its ability to hold its temporary span, filling a void perhaps and then its signature crack as it collapses. I was reminded of this yesterday. The span now 3.5 metres. What a measure of resilience this is.

individual
|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

mental RESILIENCE	PHYSICAL resilience
Ability to 'span' ? 'health career' = life chances education, work, relationships, housing, the literacies (lifelong learning) ...	Policy POLICY resilience: Strategic, planned, long-term, funded, integrated ...

 

 Previously: Caution! spanning the Theory - Practice Gap

 

Identity Politics by Charles Gaines

INDIVIDUAL

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

HUMANISTIC----------------------------------------------- MECHANISTIC

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

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GROUP - COMMUNITY - POPULATION

subjective representation	numbers , mapping , faces , contour plotting , trees
culture race multi-racial

My source: Griffin, J. Layers of complexity, FTWeekend, Life&Arts, 23-24 January, 2021. p.13.

 n.b. Yes, there is bias in terms of sources on this blog, but the FTWeekend is not cheap.