Dimensions of Discovery

Along the one-dimensional straight line
there are points and segments
but no curves or squares.

In the flat plane of two dimensions 

there are points and segments 

and circles and squares.

In the vast space of three dimensions 
there are points and segments 
and squares and spheres.

In a space of four dimensions 

there is more than 

we can imagine.

Poetry in Math Journals

         The Mathematical Intelligencer (publisher of the poem by Gizem Karaali given below) and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics (an online, open-access journal edited by Mark Huber and Gizem Karaali) are periodicals that include math-related poetry in each issue.  For example, in the most recent issue of JHM, we have these titles:

Articles:
     Joining the mathematician's delirium to the poet's logic'': Mathematical Literature and Literary Mathematics     by Rita Capezzi and Christine Kinsey
     How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways for Syllabic Variation in Certain Poetic Forms     by Mike Pinter

Poems:

     Computational Compulsions     by Martin Cohen

     Jeffery's Equation     by Sandra J. Stein

     The Math of Achilles     by Geoffrey A. Landis

And here, from Gizem Karaali, is a poetic view of the process of mathematical discovery:  the blank white page, the muddy flow of thoughts, the clarity that eventually (sometimes) blooms:

Is mathematics discovered -- or invented?

The issue of whether mathematics is invented or discovered is posed often.  Less frequently, queries as to where poetry falls in these categories. Perhaps individual answers to these questions depend on how each of us, from the inside, views the workings of the mind.   Here we have, from poet (and math teacher) Amy Uyematsu,"The Invention of Mathematics."  

What nobody else has thought

     Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986) was a Hungarian Biochemist who discovered Vitamin C and won the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine.  Szent-Gyorgi offered this summary of the research process:  discovery is seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what noone else has thought. Mathematicians and poets join research scientists in that quest to see and say something new.     I was reminded of Szent-Gyorgyi's view when I read this little poem, "The Roasted Swan Sings," by Mark Baechtel in the anthology, Cabin Fever (WordWorks, 2003):