Marcus du Sautoy: Without maths we’re lost in a dark labyrinth | Hacker News Reader

Marcus du Sautoy: Without maths we’re lost in a dark labyrinth

timesonline.co.uk

13 pointsalexjmann10 comments

I've always been disappointed by du Sautoy's TV programs and writing. They always seem completely unengaging. In this article he writes:

"Messiaen consciously exploited the asynchronicity of the prime numbers 17 and 29 to create a sense of timelessness in the Quartet for the End of Time. In another piece, Île de Feu, I cannot believe he was aware that the two twelve-note sequences he uses are the basis for generating one of the strangest symmetrical objects discovered by mathematicians in our mathematical journey through symmetry."

It's very poor to mention someone without helping the reader a little. I was not aware of Messiaen and had to look him up. And then he doesn't explain what he means leaving a non-mathematical reader confronted with sort of math-babble that is off putting.

Would it have killed him to explain "synchronicity of the prime numbers 17 and 29". What he means is that there are two sequences of notes 17 and 29 notes long in the piece. They start at the same moment but they don't 'meet again' (starting at the same note) until 17 x 29 repetitions later.

It doesn't even make any sense to a mathematician. This is an example of trying to write technically for a general reader, and failing on both counts.

I am a mathematician :-)

Messiaen was obsessed with symmetry and patterns in rhythm (see his explanation of "non-retrogradable rhythms" in "The Technique of My Musical Language"). It's silly to say that he couldn't be aware of the pattern he was creating.

I agree with your comments, and share your frustration. However, knowing Marcus, and having written for the press, if those sorts of things had been included, likely an editor would've removed them. The press is depressingly ignorant, and unwilling to inflict on readers what they themselves can't be bothered to try to understand.

I find much of Marcus's work a missed opportunity, but coverage is better than it used to be, because there used to be almost none (in the mainstream).

It seems to me that the mainstream and the "specialists" are converging to a largely content-free middle.

Perhaps he assumed people would know who Messiaen was, given that he's one of the better known modern/contemporary composers of the 20th century (that sounds consecending, but I don't mean it to be).

I agree with your general point though, in particular I wish he'd be a bit more specific when talking about these examples of mystical beauty he finds so appealing in mathematics.

Unfortunately, as some of the other commentators have mentioned I can see why that kind of thing might be cut by editors - my parents watched the series he presented a while back, and sort-of gave up by the time the last programme was on, saying they didn't really understand a lot of it. Then again, maybe that's the problem! If he explained a bit more instead of briefly touching on the more complicated areas then perhaps they would have followed it better.

I have a pretty deep knowledge of mathematics and I watched those programs as well with my SO (who is not mathematical). We gave up watching them because I was able to understand what he was getting at because of my education and she wasn't because he was so unclear. I think it was a pretty poor effort.

There are some lovely bits of mathematics (such as Cantor's diagonalization argument) that could be explained to most people with patience and enthusiasm.

I suspect that the editor should be held responsible for the lack of context surrounding the Messiasen introduction.

On a related note, "On The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics":

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Hamming.htm...

It always amuses me to hear talk of this wonderful universal language of mathematics.

On a certain level, it's true but in each field of mathematics there are many notational differences. Not quite whole new languages but certainly heavily accented dialects.

True, things are improving - at times different people in the same field would use completely different notation for the same things!

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