What i think about Mathematics & Reality: when i mow the lawn,
i automatically visualize the grass being divided up into regular, linear
segments, & this is the path i follow so as to complete the task in the
minimum number of strokes. (I determine my path through supermarket
aisles in the same fashion.) In fact i am constructing the job as i go,
& i recognize that there are any number of geometric alternatives in the
same area of space. But my tool determines the width of the path, & its
linearity. Some people (& i include friends among them) would take this
lawnmower & push it any old way; eventually they would get most of
it, but it would take a whole lot longer. (They would, however, feel "less
regimented". --Digital to them is in varying degrees, a foreign language.)
--So time constraint also is one of the hidden aspects to this job-constructing.
But if exactness alone were the goal, then i would do better to use a high-
powered weed eater--analogue style--& if i wanted to become really intimate
with the contours of the landscape, i should use scissors. (Call this an image
of an Aesthetic Civilization--such as i like to imagine Heian Japan to have
been.) --Alternately, i might let it go & stick to the paths that my routine
generates through the waist-high brush. Or, plant something else that is
so appropriate to the climate & my needs, that just as it naturally is, is
the way i like it & we co-exist peaceably. (Call this an image of a Sustainable
Society.)
   --We are so reliant on the infrastructure that our
science has allowed us to create, & so oppressed by the lack of genuine
leisure, that not only do we regard our Crunching Numbers as the acme of
all possible epistemologies, we refuse to consider that anything but small
adjustments to the machines, can ever be necessary. At best we solace
ourselves with the Dream of the Perfect Machine. Much like "Heaven",
it is a dream without particulars (can you say "nanorobots"?).
   I think it will only after the failure of the petroleum-
based world economy, & its consequent social disruptions, that people will
be willing to listen to something so radical as a value system based on
quality not quantity. The question really becomes: will it be a new smart
one, grounded in rationality, or one of the old stupid ones, grounded in
irrationality?

Black Fatima.