Dave Haan to
CK: "Symmetries aside, there are some interesting
connections: Alice executes a variation of the "Excelsior" theme, so named
by Sam Loyd in his most famous chess problem (constructed so as to have the
least likely white piece deliver checkmate), after Longfellow of course (and one
might contend Poe's Raven and subsequent Philosophy of Composition partakes
thereof)."
JM: Dave, I liked the uncomplicated way you
started your comment about the least likely piece to deliver
a checkmate: " symmetries aside..." After all, even the simplest
persons react to a sense of mystery and try to puzzle it out in their
own way. I think it was the often readable Henri Poincaré
who noted that (symmetries aside) a perfect universe would be a lifeless, static
one. This is why I'll return to a VN quote related to chess: "two chess games with identical openings and
identical end moves might ramify in an infinite number of variations, on one
board and in two brains, at any middle stage of their irrevocably
converging development." (and I wish experts
would help me to interpret VN's intended meaning). Myself, I can
merely associate this observation about the "irrevocably converging
develpment" of VN's two chess games, to another sentence of his, taken out of
its context: “common sense tells
us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of
darkness" because, when I place them together, I understand this "final
convergence" as representing dark perfection, but also offering one
more indication of the
kind of infinity human beings may inhabit while still breathing in the
luminous crack of existence.* In other, less
metaphysical issues, chess-problematist and master of
style Nabokov valued the roundabout, convoluted way, as we
may read in Speak Memory:
"I remember one particular problem I had been trying to compose
for months. There came a night when I managed at last to express that
particular theme. It was meant for the delectation of the expert
solver. The unsophisticated might miss the point of the problem entirely,
and discover its fairly simple, “thetic” solution without having passed through
the pleasurable torments prepared for the sophisticated one. The latter
would start by falling for an illusory pattern of play based on a fashionable
avant-garde theme (exposing White’s King to checks), which the composed had
taken the greatest pains to “plant” (with only one obscure little move by an
inconspicuous pawn to upset it). Having passed through this “antithetic”
inferno the by now ultra-sophisticated solver would reach the simple key move
(bishop to c2) as somebody on a wild goose chase might go from Albany to New
York by way of Vancouver, Eurasia and the Azores. The pleasant experience
of the roundabout route (strange landscapes, gongs, tigers, exotic customs, the
thrice-repeated circuit of a newly married couple around the sacred fire of an
earthen brazier) would amply reward him for the misery of the deceit, and after
that, his arrival at the simple key move would provide him with a synthesis of
poignant artistic delight."
Jansy
Mello
...................................................................................................................
The original exchanges related to chess and
symmetry are available at the VN-L archives. Below, the areas that touched
me in particular from SKB's last posting to CK.
Carolyn Kunin
>But I do think the asymmetry of the board/pieces is of greater importance
than Stan admits.
Stan
Kelly Bootle: The following two
statements are BOTH true ... But INCOMPLETE: The standard 8 x8 chessboard is
SYMMETRICAL; The same chessboard is ASYMMETRICAL... Further progress is a
problem unless you understand that symmetry and asymmetry are properties that
depend on WHICH TRANSFORMATIONs you are APPLYING... BW and Reflection
identically switch first/second player! This, I repeat, is the ONLY TRUE
game-changing Chess asymmetry: white has a marginal STATISTICAL advantage. None
of the board/piece/setup conventions OFFER this ADVANTAGE, regardless of
mathematical symmetries/asymmetries...
Carolyn Kunin:
Martin Gardener...does mention that if the universe were not asymmetrical it
wouldn't exist. In other words, matter and anti-matter would cancel each other
out.
Stan K-B: [snip}
...This is major VN-DIGRESSION. Let me refer
you to Wiki At this time, the apparent asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the
VISIBLE universe is one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimatter [ ]
Ending on a VN cum non-Tech Literary-Science
note: Following two quotes are cited in the browsable anthology:
http://www.findingpatterns.info/scrapbook/tag/text "Vladimir
Nabokov said of the gap between science and art:
'a mere dimple of a ditch
that a small frog could straddle' "
Freeman Dyson, end. Chap 1, 'Infinite in all Directions'
"This quick tour of the universe will begin with superstrings and end with
butterflies. There will be a couple of intermediate stops on the way. Like Dante
on his tour of the Inferno, I find at each level some colorful characters to add
human interest to an otherwise intimidating scene. I will not explain what
butterflies and superstrings are. To explain butterflies is unnecessary because
everyone has seen them. To explain superstrings is impossible because nobody has
seen them. But please do not think I am trying to mystify you. Superstrings and
butterflies are examples illustrating two different aspects of the universe and
two different notions of beauty. Super-strings come at the beginning and
butterflies at the end because they are extreme examples. Butterflies are at the
extreme of concreteness, superstrings at the extreme of abstraction. They mark
the extreme limits of the territory over which science claims jurisdiction. Both
are, in their different ways, beautiful. Both are, from a scientific point of
view, poorly understood. Scientifically speaking, a butterfly is at least as
mysterious as a superstring. When something ceases to be mysterious it ceases to
be of absorbing concern to scientists. Almost all the things scientists think
and dream about are
mysterious