Personally, I don't think Python *is* in the Alice, Scratch, Rapunsel space or *belongs* in that space or is competitive in that space.

Which happens to be more than fine with me.

Art

I think you don't have strong rapport with puppetry and the many conceptual similarities of programming to puppeting. When you go to a theater they hand you a "programme" and the actors are scripted in more ways than one. MVC design patterns apply (the director is a controller, working off a screenplay or storyboard, the view is what the audience takes in, and the model is the assets on stage, be they animated characters, live actors or whatever -- and lets not forget scenery). Autobio: growing up in Rome, we'd go to Piazza Navona around Christmas time (I'd love to go again) and I'd get clay puppets, maybe with just a wire from the head, but well crafted and the whole cast for some story e.g. you could buy 'Little Red Riding Hood' as a clump, complete with wolf, grandma and the rest of it. Then I'd stage shows for my younger sister, complete with taped sound track (early cassette recorder) and lighting. There's nothing more natural than using object oriented syntax, including Python's, to drive animations, e.g. actor1 = RidingHood(), actor1.wave(3). Python *is* competitive in this space, if only because the bindings might be to C# or C++ routines that are fast and efficient in their use of computer memory and resources. Python-the-language doesn't get all the credit for making the action smooth, but it *does* get a lot of credit when it comes to smoothing the surrounding pedagogy, making cybertheater a reality for many more children and adults than ever before. And per my Shuttleworth Summit paper (URL given previously), I'm all for keeping a fantasy life alive and kicking (a dying imagination is no use in math, either, so best we keep it well fed and happy). This isn't a genre you need to specialize in or make your niche, but I don't see the point in fighting it as somehow an anathema to everything Python stands for. That's very parochial, not to mention a losing battle. I'm all for strict, stark and austere mathematical stuff in its proper context, and we shouldn't drop that, not ever. But this isn't an either/or proposition. I intend to invest in both approaches myself. As I mentioned a little while back, I'm inspired by IronPython's access to the little characters that ship with Microsoft Office and so on. That's a primitive beginning, but more inspiring than Alice, which was never much about teaching Python per se, even when it was implemented in Python. I'd rather do puppets where the scripting language is indeed purely Pythonic, not some one-off language customized to just this one application (some goes for when the subject is pure geometry). It's the simplicity of Python itself which I like. We don't lose that just because of all the dancing bears. Given your experience with VPython (a theater for shapes), I'd think you'd be among the first to appreciate that fact. So what if the object is a Nemo type clown fish instead of a polyhedron (come to think of it, a clown fish *is* a polyhedron). Kirby

If you have a vision, by all means...

But *no* credit for talking about it. None.

Art

That's fair. What I've mostly done to date is in the austere/stark category -- lots of command line, not a lot of animation of cute characters. Under the heading of accomplishments, I list Pythonic Mathematics, a mature curriculum by this time.[1] As we get more graphics intensive, it's less a one man show, and certainly Kirby Urner isn't that one man, even to the extent it *is* a one man show. I'm not a skilled-enough low level programmer. So on that side of the fence (using Python to script puppets, make cartoons), I expect to be crediting others a lot (as I do even today), while piggy-backing on their work (yes, I *do* cite sources -- you may have heard rumors that Fuller was ungenerous in this way, but even that's not such an easy judgment to reach if you're a Fuller Schooler insider). Kirby [1] http://mathforum.org/kb/thread.jspa?threadID=1354856

Sorry that more Python folks don't seem to get what I am trying to do and find some way to get behind it.

Art

I understand your commitment to keeping it potentially playful is high, and that's a big positive. Having two cars approach a third in opposing lanes on the freeway, and seeing how that defines a triangle of changing shape, or doing the same with four airplanes to see a tetrahedron: that's all worthwhile animation. Kirby

That's one way to characterize a difference, sure. Keep in mind I'm bucking to be this writer guy in American literature, but not so specialized that I couldn't hold my own in various math and computer science contexts. I studied philo at Princeton and for the longest time fought with Ivory Tower philosophy types to get recognition for Fuller as a great 20th century philosopher (not mathematician, not geometer).[1] Only later did I change my tune, to some extent following Applewhite's lead, and move towards literature, which I've found more congenial in the long run. Rorty's arc has been somewhat similar I understand (Richard Rorty was my thesis adviser back when I was writing about Wittgenstein's later philo for academic credit (now I just do it for the money :-D)). Nor have I entirely abandoned my quest for a revival within the Philosophy tent -- just modified my approach and strategy, based on what I've learned from literature (which includes television, e.g. Joss Whedon's corpus).[2] Kirby [1] http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/stanford.html [2] http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2005/12/more-tv-talk.html

So if you want, just consider what I am talking about as Fuller prerequisites. ;)

Art

Yes and no. One of Fuller's big breakthroughs is at the really basic level, where you don't really need any background. People just assume that, this late in the game, there couldn't be anything new that doesn't require prerequisites to understand. They just assume all the action as at some distant frontier and it'll take years of study to reach the front line. The breakthrough consists of nesting polyhedra (an ancient game) such that whole number volumes emerge, thanks to new emphasis on the tetrahedron as the most topologically primitive volume (spheres, in the other hand, aren't defined as such, as it's a discrete geometry with no continuaa, no solids that we're talking here). In my various math versions of rbf.py (RBF = Fuller's initials), my Pythonic stash of simple polyhedra, I exploit this breakthrough in the constructor by setting self.volume = 1 for the regular tetrahedron. The stella octangula defines a cube of volume 3, octahedron of volume 4, rhombic dodecahedron of volume 6, cuboctahedron of volume 20. There's also a space-filling Coupler of volume 1 and space-filling irregular tetrahedron of volume 1/8.[1] In a 2nd or 3rd grade classroom I'll simply have kids pour beans from one shape to another (or I'll do it, asking them to guess the outcomes). Also, when we scale a poly, i.e. multiply all edges by a common scale factor, I simply multiply volume by a 3rd power e.g. newvolume = self.volume * scalefactor**3.[2] You don't need to read any Klein to accept this basic innovation in early pedagogy. Maybe Piaget would be more relevant? None of which is to say higher level geometry is irrelevant. When Fuller goes on to dissect his shapes into A and B modules, we get more into Coxeter country. HSM Coxeter was one of the great 20th century geometers and Fuller dedicates his Synergetics to him [3]. But it doesn't follow that Synergetics is geometry. Just cracking the cover and reading for a few minutes should persuade anyone of *that* simple fact -- unless you buy that "explorations in the geometry of thinking" (the work's subtitle [4]) is an academic geometry of some kind (an uphill battle I wouldn't care to fight). But a coherent-enough philosophy? Sure, definitely. Kirby [1] http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/plates/figs/plate03z.html [2] http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/python/hypertoons/rbf.py [3] http://www.math.toronto.edu/coxeter/ [4] http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html

Klein considered the tetrahedron the most topologically primitive volume - as I think I demonstrated to you by direct quote. Its like literally Page 1 of the book of his I reference on my site. He quickly also makes the connection to interesting analytics and abstraction from this ground.

OK that's all to the better. Some people say "spheres" are the most primitive shape with an inside and outside, i.e. the simplest "cave" (convex and concave aspects), so don't like the "tetrahedron" answer. Or maybe they prefer "Mobius strip" or some such.

Unless we have a semantic disconnect.

No, we don't. And mainstream geometers are quite familiar with the term "simplex" which is the same as tetrahedron in three dimensions (extended Euclideanism talk).

Or unless you haven't conducted the study to truly understand some of the historical development of the ideas floating about here.

I'm not coming at this as an issue of determining priority, in the sense of who discovered what first. Fuller was a Robinson Crusoe type, in his relationship to academia. He did a lot of input/output between the ears, but he wasn't a library kind of guy. More into the glam life of jet setting, rubbing shoulders with invisible captains of industry and such, a big J.P. Morgan fan. Applewhite was more the bookish filer type, avidly seeking to win priority battles, worrying over mundane issues of "collateral advantage" and such. He was good at his job, as the back cover of Synergetics 2 attempts to make clear.

"New" is a suspicious word, not a sacred word, in my lexicon - in any case.

Art

You're welcome to be suspicious. If Fuller was as original as I claim he is, we're in for some reshaping of intellectual history. I'm one of the principle reshapers, I like to think, but I'm not operating from within the maths department. I'm a philo guy. Kirby

...

From: kirby urner [mailto:kirby.urner@gmail.com]

You're welcome to be suspicious. If Fuller was as original as I claim he is, we're in for some reshaping of intellectual history. I'm one of the principle reshapers, I like to think, but I'm not operating from within the maths department. I'm a philo guy.

Difficult for a guy like me to try to hold my own with own the principle reshapers of human thought. Damn - and I had omelet's with you. Got to find someone to tell. Art

kirby urner wrote:

...

Difficult for a guy like me to try to hold my own with own the principle reshapers of human thought.

Yeah, I know, but I caught that bug and fixed it. So is Britney Spears.

On the presumption that she could be no more staunch and uncompromising in her pursuit of her version of the governing principles (principals?) I should indeed expect to find an effort at a dialogue with her more satisfying than this has been Art

...

Damn - and I had omelet's with you.

Got to find someone to tell.

Tell her!

Kirby

Arthur wrote:

... when you say geometry and I say geometry I think we are talking about largely different things. Fuller has not influenced me, and Klein has not influenced you.

How about Euclid? Has he influenced either one of you?

On 4/5/06, Peter Chase <pchase@sulross.edu> wrote:

How about Euclid? Has he influenced either one of you?

Euclid has influenced Arthur a lot (that's all I'll say on that score, leaving the details to him). I've approached Euclid in various ways, including via mathematician Ralph Abraham, an ISEPP lecturer and 1997 Oregon Math Summit keynoter and workshop leader.[1] If you want some more background, I trace three prongs of a fork for the "4D" meme, which got started around turn of the 19th century. Extended Euclideanism is one of the three: http://worldgame.blogspot.com/2004/11/matrix.html Also, Euclid was into more than just geometry. The so-called Euclidean Algorithm (EA), later enhanced to become the Extended Euclidean Algorithm (EEA), is all over the place in computer science literature (including in Knuth, Vol 3, including in Python). Whether Euclid deserves all the credit for this algorithm is maybe up for dispute, but that wouldn't be my interest. The fact is, he knew about it and used it. Kirby [1] http://www.grunch.net/synergetics/mathsummit.html