March 26th, 2007
Circles and Lines
Have you ever noticed how so much of everything people know, they know from circles and straight lines? Even 1 and 0. Arguably, the constants pi and e and even the root of -1 come from circles and lines.
Transcriptorial: They rebuilt the world in circles, / straight lines.
huh?
curves and angles are where its at
curves and angles are measures of change. Many people imagine that an angle is the combination of two lines that meet, but it is really a measure of their differences. The same can be said of a curve, except it is a single line changing.
‘Yes, you can hit the beaten track,
But you can never turn it back!’
(New Musik, ‘Straight Lines’)
The world is made of straight lines and curves (or circles, as you said). Any shape you can think of is just a joining of two or more of those. Humanity borrows from its surroundings–how are we supposed to think of something other than curves or lines if we don’t see anything else around us?
There is no curve.
A circle is a polygon with an infinite number of sides.
Our world is made of POINTS. And, of course, the lines that join them.
That’s true. You can learn a lot about curves from their tangent lines, even draw them as the limit of shrinking segments. But the global properties of curves are also interesting.
personally I like cubes