Symbols and their meanings

I am reading a book with very nice poetry on design and technology by John Maeda. The book addresses the pleasure which simplicity can provide in a complex world. Or, it addresses the important question on how to look at complexity and appreciate correct reduction of it.

One of the chapters in the book is called "more emotions, than less". It is stated that humans are disposed to communication with emotional content, and that we naturally try to express emotions. Maybe this is related to our strong instincts for attachments to people. Often, agreeing (or disagreeing) with ideas seems to be more important than the ideas themselves. (I think one can observe this phenomenon in schools for example. Agreeing with a teacher is often more helpful for ones career than trying to pursuit the understanding of ones own ideas. If this hypothesis is true, teachers have some important responsibility: Make their students learn to understand and build their own theories, and not to take theories because of reasons of attachment.)

John Maeda explains the use of the emotional symbols :-), ;-), :-p .And indeed, I once read the statement of a mathematician that he would like to use symbols in programming languages, greek letters to specify surfaces or volumes maybe. Because mathematicians, they transport a lot of information by the use of symbols. How forms in space can be changed to understand a process for example. Anyway, to understand symbols, there must be some form of compilation or interpretation that takes place. In computer science, interpretation is based on attributing symbols to categories, and return a value that corresponds with this state.

The stars and elements

Today, I obtained one of the most important books in human history so far. It's Euclids collections of observations about very simple elements: points and lines. My first observation is that only the introduction to this book is readable as a classical story. The introduction tells about the warm climate of the mediterranean, asks the reader to imagine flourishing agriculture and trading routes between small cities in the Nile delta 2400 years ago. Then, it tells about a city where the people gathered to discuss such things as navigation and architecture, the precursors of knowledge based industries maybe.

The first practical use of observing the stars was navigation on the sea, but the moving patterns and the wonder of small light points in an endless sky, certainly lead to more speculative questions about the hidden laws that make them and us move. Well, for Euclid, it might have lead to write a book about mathematics. Geometry is one of the origins of mathematics, and might teach us some good deal about problem solving. Euclid did not really mention what kinds of problems he wanted to solve. All he shows is how to prove that a proposal is true or false. He must have had quite some fun in discussing about design of reasoning with poets, sailors, artists, priests, kids ? I think the Alexandria of 300 B.C. might have been a place like this.