This is, it might seem, an easier task than an improved World Order, but may be not. `` This quote has been intended as a joke [25], but it, surprisingly well, captures the paradoxical nature of how we talk about monads.'' To my ear, it sound less intrusively interrupted to say ``it captures the paradoxical nature of how we talk about monads surprisingly well'' or possibly ``it captures, surprisingly well, the paradoxical nature of how we talk about monads.'' - unless the author was trying to capture the paradoxical nature of how we talk about monads, in which case, count me out. DGR. * Hans Havermann? <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Havermann> ----- From: W. Frederick Lunnon Date: Sun, Mar 1, 2020 at 11:57 AM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Euler quote (?) To: math-fun << There was scarcely a lady at court who did not take a decided part in favor of monads or against them. >> Euler, letter 5th May 1761, quoted in https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1990/eirv17n41-19901026/eirv17n41-1990102... Of course, that was before Alexander Grothendieck & Simon Peyton-Jones got in on the act --- https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1803/1803.10195.pdf I liked it better when a monad was just like a triad or a dyad, only a bit smaller. Guess I'm just an old-fashioned Six-Cornered Snowflake ... WFL On 2/29/20, Christian Boyer <cboyer@club-internet.fr> wrote:
Hans, you are probably right. Here is the original text in French.
"Ne serait-il pas à craindre que les monades qui composent cette plume avec laquelle j'écris eussent des idées du monde beaucoup plus claires que mon âme ? Et comment puis-je être assuré du contraire ? Je devrais avoir honte de me servir de cette plume pour écrire mes faibles pensées pendant que les monades dont cette plume est composée ont peut-être des pensées beaucoup plus sublimes; et V.A. serait peut-être plus satisfaite si ma plume marquait plutôt ses propres pensées sur ce papier que les miennes."
Lettre CXXXII (132) du 30 mai 1761 Euler, "Lettres à une princesse d'Allemagne sur divers sujets de physique et de philosophie"
-----Message d'origine----- De : math-fun <math-fun-bounces@mailman.xmission.com> De la part de Hans Havermann Envoyé : samedi 29 février 2020 18:20 À : math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Objet : Re: [math-fun] Euler quote (?)
There's a 1969 Lipman Bers 'Calculus' that has on p. 301: "... the kind that made Euler say: 'My pen is more intelligent than I.'"
Perhaps this is in reference to a passage in Euler's (translated) reflections on the system of monads (Letters of Euler on Different Subjects in Physics and Philosophy, 1802): "Is it not to be apprehended that the monads which compose the pen wherewith I am writing, may have ideas of the universe much clearer than those of my soul? How can I be assured of the contrary? I ought to be ashamed to employ a pen in conveying my feeble conceptions, while the monads of which it consists possibly conceive much more sublimely; and you might have greater reason to be satisfied, should the pen commit its own thoughts to paper, instead of mine."
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