An Appropriate Corrective

By JohnR |

The issue of “getting it right” is an important one in human life.  This notion of “right” however, can be interpreted in a number of different ways, and it makes a great deal of difference how we understand this notion.  It makes all the difference whether we “get it right” about “getting it right.” If […]

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Music and Mathematics

By JohnR |

Music is essentially about time, about the way a note or a beat picks up on those that went before and sets up those that will come after. A metronome responds to this essential temporality.  It produces a rigid beat to which a musician can refer in order to hold firmly to the temporal “skeleton” […]

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Friendship and The Limits of Math

By JohnR |

In his dialogue Lysis, Plato gives a nice description of a very familiar human experience.  Lysis, a young teenage boy, would like to come over to join a conversation that Socrates is having with some others, but he is too timid to do so.  When his friend Menexenus arrives, however, he feels able, in the […]

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Can You Do the Math?

By JohnR |

Apparently, some urban elementary schools now encourage their 12-year-old students to “go out for lunch,” that is, to get together in small groups and go out to purchase their lunchtime meal at a nearby downtown restaurant. When I first heard this, I was surprised, and my first thoughts were critical.  “Should schools be encouraging consumerism?” […]

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