The Topological Imagination: Spheres, Edges, and Islands (The I Tatti Renaissance Librar)

Boldly original and boundary defining, __The Topological Imagination__ clears a space for an intellectual encounter with the shape of human imagining. Joining two commonly opposed domains, literature and mathematics, Angus Fletcher maps the imagination's contours and dimensions, and along the way compels us to re-envision our human existence on the most unusual sphere ever imagined, Earth. Words and numbers are the twin powers that create value in our world. Poetry and other forms of creative literature stretch our ability to evaluate through the use of metaphors. In this sense, the literary imagination aligns with topology, the branch of mathematics that studies shape and space. The mysterious dimensionality of human existence, Fletcher says, is connected to our inhabiting a world that also inhabits us. Theories of cyclical history reflect circulatory biological patterns; the day-night cycle shapes our adaptive, emergent patterns of thought; the topology of islands shapes the evolution of evolutionary theory. Connecting literature, philosophy, and science, The Topological Imagination is an urgent and transformative work, and a profound invitation to thought. Joining literature and topology - a branch of mathematics - Angus Fletcher maps the ways the imagination's contours are formed by the spherical Earth's patterns and cycles, and shows how the world we inhabit also inhabits us. Boldly original and boundary defining, The Topological Imagination clears a space for an intellectual encounter with the shape of human imagining. Joining two commonly opposed domains, literature and mathematics, Angus Fletcher maps the imagination's ever-ramifying contours and dimensions, and along the way compels us to re-envision our human existence on the most unusual sphere ever imagined, Earth.Words and numbers are the twin powers that create value in our world. Poetry and other forms of creative literature stretch our ability to evaluate through the use of metaphors. In this sense, the literary imagination aligns with topology, the branch of mathematics that studies shape and space. Topology grasps the quality of geometries rather than their quantifiable measurements. It envisions how shapes can be bent, twisted, or stretched without losing contact with their original forms--one of the discoveries of the eighteenth-century mathematician Leonhard Euler, whose Polyhedron Theorem demonstrated how shapes preserve "permanence in change," like an aging though familiar face.The mysterious dimensionality of our existence, Fletcher says, is connected to our inhabiting a world that also inhabits us. Theories of cyclical history reflect circulatory biological patterns; the day-night cycle shapes our adaptive, emergent patterns of thought; the topology of islands shapes the evolution of evolutionary theory. Connecting literature, philosophy, mathematics, and science, The Topological Imagination is an urgent and transformative work, and a profound invitation to thought "Ordinary speech and the mathematical language of numbers appear to be light years apart, but this book counters that belief. The author joins two commonly separated domains of human creativity--the emotionally charged poetic imagination and the cool mathematical science of topology, which envisions how shapes change when objects are bent, twisted, or stretched without losing an invariant contact with their original forms. For topology, donuts and coffee mugs are "the same," like musical variations on a persistent theme. Nine concise chapters indicate how such twin powers create a concern with value. Poetry, philosophy, fiction, and history all use metaphors to stretch our ability to interpret, their freedom derived from stressing metaphoric disparity, while topology strictly treats quality rather than measurement and quantity. Shakespearean speeches echo throughout this book, for their variations on quality mark discoveries by the great mathematician Leonhard Euler. In solving an old riddle, The Bridges of Königsberg, and through his Polyhedron Theorem, he demonstrated how shape could preserve "permanence in change," like an aging though familiar human face. Current global concerns involve the connection between words, metaphors, mathematics, and transformational powers, among them our world climate; our oddly edgeless planet being structured by edges; theory of cyclical history reflecting biology; the Königsberg Bridges solution, describing networks and hence our modern algorithmic computation; the circulatory patterns of life in our biosphere; the spherical aspect of human time; the ethics derived from equitable scales; the significant topology of islands and their role in evolutionary theory and the human imagination."-- Založnikova predstavitev "Ordinary speech and the mathematical language of numbers appear to be light years apart, but this book counters that belief. The author joins two commonly separated domains of human creativity--the emotionally charged poetic imagination and the cool mathematical science of topology, which envisions how shapes change when objects are bent, twisted, or stretched without losing an invariant contact with their original forms. For topology, donuts and coffee mugs are "the same," like musical variations on a persistent theme. Nine concise chapters indicate how such twin powers create a concern with value. Poetry, philosophy, fiction, and history all use metaphors to stretch our ability to interpret, their freedom derived from stressing metaphoric disparity, while topology strictly treats quality rather than measurement and quantity. Shakespearean speeches echo throughout this book, for their variations on quality mark discoveries by the great mathematician Leonhard Euler. In solving an old riddle, The Bridges of Königsberg, and through his Polyhedron Theorem, he demonstrated how shape could preserve "permanence in change," like an aging though familiar human face. Current global concerns involve the connection between words, metaphors, mathematics, and transformational powers, among them our world climate; our oddly edgeless planet being structured by edges; theory of cyclical history reflecting biology; the Königsberg Bridges solution, describing networks and hence our modern algorithmic computation; the circulatory patterns of life in our biosphere; the spherical aspect of human time; the ethics derived from equitable scales; the significant topology of islands and their role in evolutionary theory and the human imagination."--Provided by publisher Boldly original and boundary defining, The Topological Imagination clears a space for an intellectual encounter with the shape of human imagining. Joining two commonly opposed domains, literature and mathematics, Angus Fletcher maps the imaginations ever-ramifying contours and dimensions, and along the way compels us to re-envision our human existence on the most unusual sphere ever imagined, Earth. Words and numbers are the twin powers that create value in our world. Poetry and other forms of creative literature stretch our ability to evaluate through the use of metaphors. In this sense, the literary imagination aligns with topology, the branch of mathematics that studies shape and space. Topology grasps the quality of geometries rather than their quantifiable measurements. It envisions how shapes can be bent, twisted, or stretched without losing contact with their original formsone of the discoveries of the eighteenth-century mathematician Leonhard Euler, whose Polyhedron Theorem demonstrated how shapes preserve permanence in change, like an aging though familiar face. The mysterious dimensionality of our existence, Fletcher says, is connected to our inhabiting a world that also inhabits us. Theories of cyclical history reflect circulatory biological patterns; the day-night cycle shapes our adaptive, emergent patterns of thought; the topology of islands shapes the evolution of evolutionary theory. Connecting literature, philosophy, mathematics, and science, The Topological Imagination is an urgent and transformative work, and a profound invitation to thought.

In a bold and boundary defining work, Angus Fletcher clears a space for an intellectual encounter with the shape of human imagining. Joining literature and topology—a branch of mathematics—he maps the ways the imagination's contours are formed by the spherical earth's patterns and cycles, and shows how the world we inhabit also inhabits us.

Topology and the idea of form The mind imagining Disparities in metaphor Euler discovers the first edge Vico and the cycles of human history The round earth's imagined corners Notes on a family of edges Shape and the ethics of scale No man is an island.