I've read from time to time people making comparisons between poetry and mathematics, which on the surface seems so totally unlikely. To me personally, I've never been proficient in math with anything beyond the basics and don't find it interesting at all. So naturally, such comparisons don't seem to fit for me. In addition, I see math as very static, poetry as any art, seems to defy such description. So when I come across this quote, I am especially amused:
The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I've always had it in for 2+2. For years I've been irritated by the inaccuracy of it. Of course, considered abstractly, the sum of two and two is four but in reality if you have a bowl full of apples and you take out 4 they'll all be of different shapes, sizes and colour. You have 4 apples but what is an apple? There is no such thing as an apple. No two apples are identical so how could 2 apples plus 2 apples make four apples?
ReplyDeleteAs far a 2+2=5 you should have a read at Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four where the validity of that statement is discussed at length. Here's a link to an on-line version:
1984 Just do a search for "two plus two".
2+2=4...under the assumption one is working in base ten. But the possibilities!
ReplyDelete(There are 10 kinds of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.)