I wrote an essay at the end of my junior year in college. I had just read one of the nerd bibles: Godel, Escher, Bach; and was taking all these wacky physics classes. With all these ideas in my head about philosophy and science I felt the need to organize them. So, for the fun of it, I busted out a 20 page essay. Its target audience was for math undergrads who were interested in physics and philosophy. Since I was president of the math club (I can hear you snickering) I put it on the math club website, and by some lack of foresight, no one has taken it down… The essay’s permanence grandfathered it into Google’s search. Search “math and reality” or its variants and you’ll see I’m either #1 or #2. Suck it Wikipedia. As much as I think this is cool…I only now have discovered this is also dangerous… Sometimes I wonder where this essay has popped up so I work some google-fu magic. It was a big ego boost to see it make cameos in some random places. But then I found this one (large pdf file, click on own risk!!). It turns out there’s a “journal” in which my essay has been referenced at length. This is no ordinary journal, however, but The Journal of Transfigural Mathematics (JTM) Volume 1. First, I don’t even think transfigural is a word….Second, there is no volume 2 (correction there are 3 volumes!). I’m guessing the distribution of this journal depends on how hard the wind was blowing them out of the editor’s pickup’s trunk. However, the journal claims its circulation …goes far and wide. The journal… covers the university libraries, libraries of research centres, libraries of writers guilds and associations, arts council libraries and private libraries of lovers and beloved of the muse around the world. What, you didn’t get a copy? The first few pages of JTM begins with its “purpose”: Original ideas. Innovative ideas. Elaborate account. Creation. Innovation. Elaboration. One is new and strange. One enriches the strange that is no longer new. One adds to what enriches the new that is no longer strange. You really can’t make this stuff up… So what does this have to do with my essay? The first article is entitled “SUPERCHANNEL: Inside and Beyond Superstring. The Natural Inclusion of One in All” [capitalization, not mine]. It is a 53-page trailblazer of modern mathematics. What is the SUPERCHANNEL? Unfortunately, no one can be told what the SUPERCHANNEL is. You’ll have to read it for yourself. The writers of the paper quote my several times. Each time makes less and less sense. Things don’t start off too well, either. The first passage is on page 12, where I talk a bit about graphs and functions - a distinction never made clear to most high school students. What does the SUPERCHANNEL have to say about it? The parabola made of points is one of  the realities of mathematics. But this reality only exists on the condition that its foundations are valid. In other words, the reality of anything cannot be discussed in isolation from the conditions under which it arises. Uh huh… Then I talk about how the number 1 doesn’t really exist. To which SUPERCHANNEL says That is 1 which like every other so-called natural number is isolated from the space that it both includes and inhabits. With 1 detached from its environment which is the space into which it flows and from which others flow into it, as we have in the fluid logic numbers of this work. So, it, 1 has no place to stand and can simply be nowhere, a singularity all alone with no possibility of spatial neighbourhood because the infinity and zero of space has been abstracted from its material content and vice versa. Later it is mentioned In transfigural mathematics, as we shall get to see, mathematical, scientific and human reality, what Valdman calls the heart of what it means to exist, are brought into natural communion. Oops! maybe I should have been paying attention…

I wrote an essay at the end of my junior year in college. I had just read one of the nerd bibles: Godel, Escher, Bach; and was taking all these wacky physics classes. With all these ideas in my head about philosophy and science I felt the need to organize them. So, for the fun of it, I busted out a 20 page essay. Its target audience was for math undergrads who were interested in physics and philosophy. Since I was president of the math club (I can hear you snickering) I put it on the math club website, and by some lack of foresight, no one has taken it down…

The essay’s permanence grandfathered it into Google’s search. Search “math and reality” or its variants and you’ll see I’m either #1 or #2. Suck it Wikipedia. As much as I think this is cool…I only now have discovered this is also dangerous…

Sometimes I wonder where this essay has popped up so I work some google-fu magic. It was a big ego boost to see it make cameos in some random places. But then I found this one (large pdf file, click on own risk!!).

It turns out there’s a “journal” in which my essay has been referenced at length. This is no ordinary journal, however, but The Journal of Transfigural Mathematics (JTM) Volume 1. First, I don’t even think transfigural is a word….Second, there is no volume 2 (correction there are 3 volumes!). I’m guessing the distribution of this journal depends on how hard the wind was blowing them out of the editor’s pickup’s trunk. However, the journal claims its circulation

…goes far and wide. The journal… covers the university libraries, libraries of research centres, libraries of writers guilds and associations, arts council libraries and private libraries of lovers and beloved of the muse around the world.

What, you didn’t get a copy?

The first few pages of JTM begins with its “purpose”:

Original ideas. Innovative ideas. Elaborate account. Creation. Innovation. Elaboration. One is new and strange. One enriches the strange that is no longer new. One adds to what enriches the new that is no longer strange.

You really can’t make this stuff up…

So what does this have to do with my essay?

The first article is entitled “SUPERCHANNEL: Inside and Beyond Superstring. The Natural Inclusion of One in All” [capitalization, not mine]. It is a 53-page trailblazer of modern mathematics. What is the SUPERCHANNEL? Unfortunately, no one can be told what the SUPERCHANNEL is. You’ll have to read it for yourself.

The writers of the paper quote my several times. Each time makes less and less sense. Things don’t start off too well, either. The first passage is on page 12, where I talk a bit about graphs and functions - a distinction never made clear to most high school students. What does the SUPERCHANNEL have to say about it?

The parabola made of points is one of  the realities of mathematics. But this reality only exists on the condition that its foundations are valid. In other words, the reality of anything cannot be discussed in isolation from the conditions under which it arises.

Uh huh…

Then I talk about how the number 1 doesn’t really exist. To which SUPERCHANNEL says

That is 1 which like every other so-called natural number is isolated from the space that it both includes and inhabits. With 1 detached from its environment which is the space into which it flows and from which others flow into it, as we have in the fluid logic numbers of this work. So, it, 1 has no place to stand and can simply be nowhere, a singularity all alone with no possibility of spatial neighbourhood because the infinity and zero of space has been abstracted from its material content and vice versa.

Later it is mentioned

In transfigural mathematics, as we shall get to see, mathematical, scientific and human reality, what Valdman calls the heart of what it means to exist, are brought into natural communion.

Oops! maybe I should have been paying attention…