Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, is the perfect find for my interest in mathematics in sci-fi.\u00a0 Most of my previous blog comments have remarked on the passing mention of mathematics within the plot of a sci-fi novel.\u00a0 This book is founded on a monastic society of philosopher-scholars whose knowledge of the theoretical far surpasses the technical world that surrounds them.\u00a0 Many of the texts on my bookshelves deal with directed acyclic graphs, DAGs, but they are not fiction.\u00a0 Reading the term as it is used to describe the structure of the metaverse, or polycosmi, was geekishly thrilling.\u00a0 And who among you has read the phrase \u201csymmetry group of the eighth roots of unity\u201d in fiction?\u00a0 Stephenson describes a piece of the architecture of his Mynster in those terms.\u00a0 The public opinion of his \u201cavout\u201d over time, called Iconographies, are studied, revealing \u201ccertain patterns that recur again and again, like, like \u2013 attractors in a chaotic system.\u201d\u00a0 When the hero makes that remark, his superior says, \u201cSpare me the poetry\u201d!\u00a0 That is exactly what I see in the use of these terms within literature, poetry.\u00a0 My own attempts to do this lead me to a style I call techno-poetic.\u00a0 Anathem contains enough references to real mathematics that you could create a good college course from extracting them and studying the concepts.\u00a0 Or, you could read more quickly and let the mathematics become part of the setting, like the stones of the \u201cMath.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anathem, by Neal Stephenson, is the perfect find for my interest in mathematics in sci-fi.\u00a0 Most of my previous blog comments have remarked on the passing mention of mathematics within the plot of a sci-fi novel.\u00a0 This book is founded on a monastic society of philosopher-scholars whose knowledge of the theoretical far surpasses the technical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefifthprophet.com\/wpBlog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}