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The Book of Laurence - 12 -
- 12 -
MAXIM 504. Everything that liberates our mind without at the
same time imparting self-control is pernicious.
Sadly Goethe was not fond of Mathematicians. The nicest
thing he wrote about them was
“Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchman: whatever you say to
them they translate into their own language, and right away it is
something entirely different.”
24
X.
Enjoy the arts but understand the sciences. That’s actually
bloody
hard work. You need to keep up your math, get
into a decent University (Dalhousie is fine and a damn
sight cheaper than Harvard) and rent fewer DVD’s.
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26
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Most scientists have been more positive. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) wrote
"The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the
rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He
revealed to us in the language of mathematics. "
Likewise Mary Somerville (1780-1872)
as quoted in Martha Somerville’s Personal
Recollections of Mary Somerville (Boston, 1874) wrote
"Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these
purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which have been by
slow degrees vouchsafed to man, and are still granted in these latter times by the
Differential Calculus, now superseded by the Higher Algebra, all of which must have
existed in that sublimely omniscient Mind from eternity."
The 2006 breakthrough of the year in Science was a Theorem due to Perlman
proving the Poincaré conjecture. By the way, Alan Turing (1912-1954) said
“Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.” I'm not sure
what it means, but I do like the sentiment!
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Mainly rent the originals, such as the 1962 Manchurian Candidate, the 1988 BBC
Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe or La Cage aux Folles of 1978.
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As with all my other Tenets, don’t over use this advice. There are some great
remixes of crappy originals. That Will guy from Stratford was a genius at
salvaging dumb plots; and most every `Whovian’ prefers their own first Dr Who.
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