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Mathematics, Poetry
and Beauty
This page intentionally left blank
Mathematics, Poetry
and Beauty
Ron Aharoni
Technion, Haifa, Israel
World Scientific
NEW JERSEY • LONDON • SINGAPORE • BEIJING • SHANGHAI • HONG KONG • TA I P E I • CHENNAI
Published by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224
USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601
UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE
Hebrew edition: Matematika, shira veyofi (Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing, Tel Aviv, 2008)
Translators for the English edition: Merav Aharoni and Edward Levin
For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center,
Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from
the publisher.
Printed in Singapore
Contents
Introduction: Magic 1
Displacement 7
Part I: Order 13
Hidden Order 19
To Discover or to Invent 25
Mathematical Harmonies 31
√
Why 2 is Not a Rational Number 39
Independent Events 61
v
vi Mathematics, Poetry and Beauty
Compression 85
Mathematical Ping-Pong 89
Poetical Ping-Pong 99
Topology 123
Matchmaking 129
Imagination 135
Symmetry 169
Contents vii
Impossibility 179
Twists 233
Change 243
Estrangement 247
3
4 Mathematics, Poetry and Beauty
This poses a riddle. How can the austere and abstract world of mathe-
matics resemble art? What does geometry have in common with music, or
arithmetic with poetry? One answer is that both mathematics and poetry
search for hidden patterns.
So, this book is about the magic of poetry and of mathematics, and how
close the two are. It is divided into three parts. Part I is about order. We
shall see in it how both fields uncover deep hidden patterns. In Part II we
shall study common techniques of the two fields. Finally, in Part III I will
try to draw conclusions on the concept of beauty.
But first, I want to give a glimpse of what’s to come. I would like to
describe one sleight of hand.
Displacement
[. . .]
My images are
Transparent like windows in a church:
Through them
One can see
How the light of the sky shifts
And how my loves
Fall
Like dying birds.
7
8 Mathematics, Poetry and Beauty
A six-sided polygon (a hexagon), with a straight line that intersects all its sides. Can you
also draw a seven-sided polygon (a heptagon), with a straight line intersecting all its
sides?
on the side on which it began. That is, it ends on the side opposite Q. But
since the heptagon is closed, it should end at Q. This contradiction means
that the assumption that every side of the heptagon intersects the straight
line is impossible.
After seven crossings, we are on the other side of the river. The polygon is not closed.
pair, followed by game between the winner of the first round and the player
who was waiting on the sidelines. Let us now skip to a tournament with 10
players. The following diagram depicts a possible course of events. In the
first round 5 games were played; in the second, 2; in the third, 1; and in the
fourth, again 1.
Every so often, an ant reaches one of the pole ends, and then it falls off
and disappears forever.
Question: In the end, will all the ants fall off the pole? If so, how long will
this take?
At first glance, the answer seems to depend on the initial state, that is,
on the number of ants on the pole and their position. If there are many
ants, it seems that it might take a long time for all of them to fall off.
How can we test this? I have already told you the first secret of thinking
mathematically: studying examples. Mathematical thought is a play between
examples and abstractions. The difference between the two is that strokes in
the direction of the concrete can be done consciously, that is, examples can
be evoked deliberately. For this reason one ought to begin with examples.
An additional reason, of course, is that examples are the raw material of
15
16 Mathematics, Poetry and Beauty
abstraction. In the case of the ants, the simplest example is that of a single
ant. If the ant is at one end of the pole and goes toward the other end, it
will fall off in one minute. In any other case, it will fall in less than a minute.
But we still have not touched upon the core of the problem: the collisions. So
let us look at two ants, located at the opposite ends of the pole, advancing
toward each other.
After half a minute, they will meet in the middle of the pole, reverse
their directions, and fall off in another half a minute. So, both will fall after
exactly one minute.
The next example is a bit less obvious. Imagine one ant starting at the
right end, the other exactly in the middle, and they are advancing toward
each other.
After the collision, ants A and B will go towards each other, meet in the
middle after another quarter of a minute, reverse their directions and each
will fall after another half a minute. Ant C will had fallen from the right end
even before that. Again, it will take a total of one minute for all ants to fall.
Now this is really strange. In all our examples, all the ants fell within a
minute. Does this always hold true? The answer is “yes,” and the proof
is easy. That is, if you have the right insight. Strange as it may seem,
this insight does not add information but ignores information: it ignores
the identity of the ants. If we don’t care who the ants are, then what
happens at the moment two ants meet? Actually, nothing. Before their
meeting, one ant goes to the left, and the other to the right; after their
encounter, the exact same thing happens: then too, one ant proceeds to
the left, and the other to the right, at the same speed. But for our pur-
pose, which ant goes to the left and which goes to the right doesn’t
matter.
So in effect, there are no collisions. They were only there to confuse us.
The problem is completely identical to the problem: “ants are proceeding
along a one meter long pole, each at the speed of one meter per minute,
without colliding and without changing direction. How long will it take for
them to fall?” There is no mystery here. All will fall off in one minute
or less.
Mathematicians are a lucky breed. They get paid to play. When we take
into account the billions that are invested in mathematical research and edu-
cation, we would expect them to be busy with applied projects. In reality,
most mathematician allow themselves to indulge in problems like this one.
Why? Because the impractical appearance of this riddle is misleading. In
fact, it is a good example of the discipline’s primary strength: abstraction.
The ants in the problem are mathematical: real ants do not move at a uni-
form speed, and do not obey such simple rules. Mathematics is the study
of systems that follow well defined rules. And the abstraction is even more
evident in the solution, that strips the situation of its details, and exposes
its essence.
Ignoring the irrelevant, as in the ants problem, is a primary characteristic
of mathematical thought. Mathematics takes the abstraction process to its
extreme. It takes a complex looking tree, strips it of its leaves, and reveals
the trunk. Think, for example, of the concept of number. The person who
invented the number “4” understood that, as far as the rules of arithmetic
are concerned, it is immaterial if he had 4 stones or 4 pencils, what color
they are, and how they are arranged. 4 stones and 3 stones are 7 stones,
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