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Inside a mathematical proof lies literature. Some of the greatest mathematicians were also some of classical history’s most poetic storytellers
“Like novelists, mathematicians are creative authors. With diagrams, symbolism, metaphor, double entendre and elements of surprise, a good proof reads like a good story. (…) [Reviel] Netz reveals the stunning stylistic similarities between Hellenistic poetry and mathematical texts from the same era. (…) In the very layout, in the use of a particular formulaic language, in the structuring of the text (…) its success or failure depends entirely on features residing in the text itself. It is really an activity very powerfully concentrated around the manipulation of written documents, more perhaps than anywhere else in science, and comparable, then, to modern poetry. (…)
Metaphor is fairly standard in mathematics. Mathematics can only become truly interesting and original when it involves the operation of seeing something as something else – a pair of similarly looking triangles, say, as a site for an abstract proportion; a diagonal crossing through the set of all real numbers.”
— Reviel Netz, Professor of Classics and Philosophy at Stanford University, Inside a mathematical proof lies literature, says Stanford’s Reviel Netz, Stanford University Report, May 7, 2012. See also:
☞ Oulipo - a group of writers interested in exploring the application of mathematical structures, patterns and algorithms to writing
☞ Oulipo - a group of writers interested in exploring the application of mathematical structures, patterns and algorithms to writing
