reading the story 'the two gallants,' which is published in a collection of James Joyce's stories entitled Dubliners . I found myself in a kinship with the narrator, who just kept walking since he could not figure out what else to do. The story begins with a fraternal conversation between the narrator and is friend Corely, who has a notoriously bulbous head and is preparing to go and meet a woman who he is going out with. Then Corley leaves and the narrator (call him james) walks. I have experienced this transition from the fraternal gathering to the lonely walk many times.
There is in interesting phenomena that occurs sometimes in the book where the content of the interlocutors' conversation is not explicitly expressed, the surrounding discourse presents itself as a kind of background noise. Anyways I related to this character who walked because he was not sure what else to do. I have found myself in that position many times. I guess another instance of this is in Crime and Punishment, which is a story by Dostoyevsky with a narrator who likes to walk.
I remember when I read crime and punishment I was living at the place at tenth and carona with charles ashley and james. I had felt similarly encornered, at that time in my life, as I do now. I think it was a living-arrangement consequence. My occupying the living room made me sort of omnipresent, especially with busy social lives and all (eg the living room was often occupied by people who did not live there). Often I needed space so I would walk over to wash park. I remember walking alot in those days, due to social anxiety. I was even sort of imitating the narrator in the Dostoyevsky book. But I had already been walking when I began to read it. It is weird that I come accross another story about a walker as I contemplate moving back into the neighborhood, namely into a place a few blocks away from 'the space place.'
Anyways there is a certain lonesomeness in the writing of joyce. And he plays with language in a really singular way. Infact the editor from penguin publishers who put together the volume included a glossary due to the many equivocal uses of words and also the specificity of the slang. Also helpful historical information about the church culture at the time and the city of Dublin (to an almost annoying degree - for example, any time joyce references a street name, there is a footnote about it. However it is not too much of a bother since you can just skip footnotes, and it is genuinely nice to have them when you do get curious about an unfamiliar word).
There was just a very lound thunderstrike
I think it would be an interesting idea to take up a research project in thinking about the question 'what are numbers' and others related to it. If you follow the modern path of Zermelo-Frankel axioms, you are led to the empty set.
There is a certain intuitive point of departure which makes some sense to me. It says that if we are basically famillar with numbers, how you can add them, multiply them, etc, then it is not very important *what* they are. It is a fine point of view. Basically, many aren't too interested in questions like 'what are numbers.'so they're not so fixated on foundations - they have moved on to the fun world of calculations and other parts of math not so concerned with foundational issues. I think I like this point of departure. If you go looking for the proverbial thing, the object of science, then you find the name of the void, i.e., the mark of lack (these latter two are Badiou's phrases). The empty set is the mark of lack, for Badiou. So it is an inscription, literaly with a pen or piece of chalk, or in this case an electronic document, that additionally has a name, 'empty-set'. it is an axiom: there is an empty set. This is known as the 'Axiom of the empty set.' It is one of two existence axioms - i.e., unproved assumptions that you begin with of the form 'this or that exists.' the other is the axiom which asserts that there is an infinite set. Without going into the details (for example defining finite vs infinite), this axiom, along with some others, implies the existence of the 'whole' or 'natural' numbers, also sometimes called the 'counting' numbers (the royal equivocation; I imagine the count): \(0,1,2,3,4,5...\) and so on. perhaps I can do a bit of on this counting shenanagins.
There are two undefined notions that are the main notions of set theorey. They are undefined in the sense of: try to come up with a non-circular definition. To me, it seems sort of impossible. They are 'set' along with the relationship 'belonging.' Sets are denoted with variables, maybe \(a,b,c,...\). Most use the the symbol \(\in\) for belonging. So you have sentences like '\(a \in b\),' which say that \(a\) 'belongs to,' 'is a member of,' or simply 'is in' \(b\).
I think I have decided I would like to show which axioms are necessary to get the whole numbers in set theory but to be honest doing it from the ground up is somewhat technical, so I won't bore anyone with it if no one is interested. Its not too bad you just need a few more axioms to prove that there is a set that exists, solely as a consequence of the notions 'set' and 'belonging' as well as some axioms concerning them, that has the structure of the counting numbers one is usually familiar with. Theres actually a nice simplicity to the arguments - if anyone is interested in a more detailed account, let me know. It would be a fun topic to write about, but it is much more dense and technical than I feel like writing at the moment. It is pretty interesting to go through the construction, particularly because then you realize the importance of an axiom affirming the existence of an infinite set (the second existence axiom of the two mentioned above). The details of why you need the axiom are related to noticing, given some natural number \(n\), that number has a successor \(n+1\). In order to say that there exists a set of all these numbers (called, most often 'the natural numbers,' but less familiarly 'omega'; \(\mathbb{N}\) only and \(\omega\) respectively), we must affirm axiomatically that there is some infinite set. It is worth noting some reject the axiom of infinity - they say there are only finitely many numbers. There is a lot that can be done with finitely many numbers, namely every single calculation that a computer does (finite storage meaning only finitely many numbers can be stored, of course).
this reminds me of a recent concern, which has been carrying forward. I do get curious about mathematics. It really seems that I keep coming back to the keyboard. But to type in the keyboard is to be in the domain of images and representations, the internet. It is always interacted with via a GUI, graphical user interface. Can I make an intervention there in the GUI? I don't think these blogs count as interventions since nobody reads them. inventions, intentions, etc.