/lit/ - Literature

>>5688429
What?
What do you think "art form" means?

define "art form"

>>5688453
>>5688493
pseudointellectual masterubation.

The real beauty of life is found in the sciences.

>>5688429

Lockhart gives straightforward examples of why Math is art, and functions more like an art than as a "science".

If you mean can math be beautiful he answers that as well: yes.

But it's beauty requires training, like a play by shakespeare, not every Chad off the street will "get it".

>>5688505
So you're saying that science is a human manufacture with the sole intent of carrying aesthetic values and make a conection with the spectator?

>>5688512

I disgree. Functions tend to be very...linear. No pun intended. They have a beginning and an end, and often the answers are very black-and-white. There is the correct conclusion to an equation, and the many, many wrong ones to follow.

You could say that non-linear derivatives are a bit like art, whose shape and scope of definition is ever changing, and I may side with you there, but math can be very unfeeling and procedural. Art can be mechanical too, but I would happily say that it isn't art. Art is a feeling as much as it is raw technique.

Math, to me, tends to be...soulless. I shouldn't say that though, because it does have a certain beauty to it, but like art, it is in the eye of the beholder.

>>5688429

You must read this if you haven't already. And yes, mathematics is an art form, the art of the universe, the language of existence. I'm not kidding, mathematics is beautiful and I wish I had studied it in college

The meaning of 'art' has changed so much over time. Originally science studying something, art meant practicing something, now it's all out of whack.

A Mathematicians Lament makes some good points, but I don't agree with all of it. People should still be taught higher math whether or not they find it 'fun', but it definitely should be taught more along the lines proposed in that work, especially the part about phrasing things in prose for a while before phrasing them in mathematical notation.

>>5688505
>The real beauty of life is found in the sciences.
prove it

>>5688429
Math is an art form, but almost everyone thinks it isn't because they teach it in a mechanic way. Many engineers learn math in a mechanic way, so they don't get to see the art of mathematics.

I remember one mathematician in my uni who used to look at certain equations and say "It's pure beauty. Just look at it" . I think he was so fast that he actually drew the equation in his mind.

>>5688599
Originally as what?
Greeks didn't have a specific word for art, the "original" concept comes from catholic interpretation of greek texts.

Still, science is about understanding reality, which has nothing to do with art. Being an art isn't a merit, it's something with a certain contextual meaning.

>>5688625
But art is a manufactured reality. In any case economics may be art, but pure math is just understanding reality.

>>5688672
what about mathematical models?

>>5688683
Are they useful tools to work other things or are they self suficient aesthetic pieces?

>>5688688
Alright, faggot, you win this time. I'll be back.

>>5688672
>pure math is just understanding reality

that's science which is for mechanical understanding reality, not math, especially pure. a mathematician can say on a whim, 'let's take coordinate axis x y z and add five new axis r s t u w to describe an eight-dimensional space' (a bland example but i'm terrible at math), how it's 'just understanding reality'? or the number theory, prime numbers and their distribution etc, what reality is behind it except numbers themselves?

also a good part of the art is for understanding reality

>>5688625

Something can be beautiful and not really an art. I definitely get what you're saying though, DFW talked once about a "click" you get from some really great piece of art. You get the same click from math. I got it hardcore when I did calculus, the feeling of understanding everything and it all falling into place, indescribable. You wanna jump out the seat, clawing at the skies and telling everyone "Look at this shit! These differential's y'all, --you can plot trajectory, and find acceleration! It works! Holy shit!"

>>5688672

No. Math is only "correct" because it's designed that way. 2 + 2 = 4 because the way peano arithmetic is set up, and how numbers are defined, makes it necessarily true. 2 + 2 = 1 is a perfectly valid and correct equation if, say, you're adding numbers within a ring. Set theory is fucking hard but you get what I'm saying; math is artificially constructed, and we only see it as having some correspondence with reality because that artificial construction is geared toward being as useful as possible.

I'd say math is an art that's oriented towards utilitarianism. Mathematical beauty is hard to deny when you're in it deep (not just, "woah man euler's equation man woah, that's crazy")

>>5688672
>pure math is just understanding reality
I can't imagine any "pure" (non-applied) mathematician giving a flying fuck whether or not what they do correlates with any reality outside of math itself.

>>5688694
Don't leave, stay in /lit/ and grab a book!

>>5688429
Mathematics can be just as beautiful as music or the visual arts, it's just that it only appeals to a select few that understand

Math can be art, just not pop-art

>>5688701
Well, I was being as brief as possible.
>A mathematician may say on a whim let's do X
And a painting student will do dozens of canvas before doing something he would consider a work of art. A process isn't a work of art.
Further more, I don't see the difference between playing with numbers and playing a card game (at a conceptual level, of course), a game isn't a work of art since it's just one itteration of a potentially limited set of developments.

>a good part of art is udnerstadning reality
And a good part of painting is making the paint, but the paint nor the process of making it are a painting.

Hope I was clear enough, Kitty, you're the best tripfag and i wish the best.

>>5688710
Just being artificially constructed isn't enough to make something art, every instance of language is artificially constructed (I love you Chomsky, but you get me old man) but just using that construction doesn't make that production art.

I think you can make art with math, math is a huge part of music for example, but by itself, and even more in the traditional use it gets, it hasn't produced many, if any, art works.

The concept of art form presented in the OP is a general thing that grinds my gears since it resonates with discussions about vidja being art that fail to get that the medium doesn't validate or neglect the artistic value of a certain work. I think the first posts were going at that (mine was at least)

>>5688724
But it correlates with math itself, right? I mean, I've seen guys talking about the different types of infinite and stuff and I really don't know about this stuff and I'd be happy to learn a bit.
Usually it's understood that a work of art should be an autonomous piece that is understandable by itself. Which doesn't exclude works of art that requiere certain knowledge to apreciate, and I don't want to go against the idea that "math requieres background to be understood" since I'm okay with that and would say the same about more than one cannon work of classical art, but if math exists to interact with more math isn't it closer to a logic system or language than an autonomous work of art?
Sincere question, no bully please.

>>5688730
I'll do that, faggot.

>>5688778
Hope you like it, dumbass!

There are some rec lists in the sticky.

>>5688765
>Usually it's understood that a work of art should be an autonomous piece that is understandable by itself.

Not really. Damn near for the entire 20th century Western Art was explicitly not understandable by itself, even if the art was supposed to "stand on its own" and was "art for art's sake" there was a great deal of context and theory which went into understanding the piece.

And before there was a great deal of history, allegory, and context that went into many "traditional" paintings.

I tend to agree that art ought to be as autonomous as possible, but that's actually quite far from the standard (at least for Fine Arts).

>if math exists to interact with more math isn't it closer to a logic system or language than an autonomous work of art?

Not quite sure what you're getting at here. I mean, generally logic and language are used to interact with things outside themselves rather than just themselves for their own sake and a great deal of art is in a way "conversing" with earlier art (and sometimes exclusively so).

If Mathematics has to be placed into some broader category, I'd stick it closer to art or at least somewhere between art & logic.

>I've seen guys talking about the different types of infinite and stuff and I really don't know about this stuff and I'd be happy to learn a bit.

There's a surprising amount of mathematics out there which really doesn't require that much technical understanding. Basic Set Theory, which deals with infinities amongst other things, isn't too terribly hard to grasp (at least enough to appreciate it).

The most formal math I've done is Calculus AB, and I've forgotten most of it since that was over a decade ago. But I can still suss out something like Set Theory through the SEP and other resources, or slog my way through a rudimentary understanding of Gödel.

Math of that kind definitely has a distinct artfulness to it.

>>5688756
>math is a huge part of music for example

In some ways, but it's not really a huge part of most music composition.

>>5688559
Math only becomes interesting well after you're done with derivatives. I don't think that Math before 3rd year (or a good second year) is even relevant to the discussion.

>>5688429
its great. if this thread is still around tomorrow ill post a longer response

>>5688569

Yeah sure it's fun to do when you find yourself with 6 hours to kill on a Sunday morning, and you can watch some bread-dough rise in the fridge and sip coffee, get up and walk outside to get some air every 15 minutes, walk in circles and talk out loud to yourself.


But when you have 19 problems to get done and you're raping and pillaging through the proofs in your textbook to find exactly the facts you need to finish them in time for class in 24 hours (you've already given up on the idea of sleep), and your hands are shaking from a borderline caffeine overdose, and suddenly you remember you have a problem set for another class due right as your about to finish and seriously contemplate suicide after giving up on your career choice and sacrificing your 4.0 GPA on an altar like a slave-boy to Quetzalcoatl on the Aztec new year, it's roughly as fun as being run over by a bus, and certainly less beautiful than your organs scattered about the street in 500 pieces.

i read it in high school and liked it compared to the other math books i had read at that time (one on fermat's last thm, ged, etc).
it isn't about math being art moreso than just the plain creativity required and grappling with the loss of it, plus some pointless bitching about applied maths being inferior.

>>5688831
>First part
I didn't mean that it should be understood without a background, as I said in my post. But the idea is that each work doesn't requiere other works to make sense. If you need two three sculptures to make your work, those three sculptures are a single piece with three elements. It's not about dificulty of entry, but about being a work of art by itseld instead of a part of a bigger thing.

In that sense a single mathematic form stil requieres the whole concept of mathematics to make sense, while music doesn't requiere a mechanical understanding for each piece to work.

If anything math steps in that complex area where you also would put "narrative arts". To understand Lolita you need to have a grasp of language, but you know that Lolita starts at a certain point and everything after the end of the book isn't part of the book. I really don't know, and could perfectly be the case, if there are mathematical forms that exist solely to be instead of being a step for another progression. And as kitty mentioned, if it's just a play with mathematical concepts you're just doing a game or a practice, you could do that with paint and it wouldn't be the same as a work intended to be, it would be a game.

>>5688841
But you can't have music without math, I was thinking in the terms of chemistry is a huge part of painting.

>>5689815
Why can't you spread those things out through the year? I really doubt that the people snorting aderrall while doing coffee enemas to get ready for the exam have been doing that every single day of the year up to that point.

>>5690102

A deadline is a deadline. Sometimes you get a shit-tier schedule.

Honestly I'm beginning to realize my biggest problem is sleeping at appropriate times. Lots of laying in bed not falling asleep and then being so tired the next day I can't focus, or I just lose motivation and decide to sleep through class and then have to bust ass to make up for it.

>>5690094
>It's not about dificulty of entry, but about being a work of art by itseld instead of a part of a bigger thing.

But it is, it's part of our culture.

We often take for granted the "language" of art (if we want to put it that way) since we've been exposed to it constantly since childhood such that the chiaroscuro in a Rembrandt painting seems entirely obvious (and so we deride Asian cultures for not figuring out these obvious things themselves).

Similarly for music. For example I may feel classical music is fairly straightforward and obviously appealing, until I recall that as a child I slept to the sound of Vivaldi's Four Seasons every night.

Conversely, if our early mathematics education were more thorough and rigorous then a great deal more math would appear to "stand on its own" for us.

I wouldn't quite say that Math is Art, though I'm willing to go with "related to". However the notion that math is significantly different from art because it takes a mathematician to appreciate math while anyone can appreciate art is pretty far off base. One doesn't need to be a mathematician to appreciate math, and there's quite a bit of art I wouldn't expect anyone but an artist (or art historian) to appreciate.

What do you guys think of John Casti?

For everyone saying math isn't art because it takes a mathematician to appreciate it, does that mean you also believe that literature is not an art? In order to appreciate literature you have to be able to read. Obviously in our circumstances literacy is something we take for granted, but it is a pretty big deal.

>>5688672
> Just manufactured reality.
> Implying there's any other kind of reality.

>>5690873
Yeah, I rarely get more than a couple of weeks for any work if I'm not having a week by week kind of deal. But when it comes to exams I'm sure that at least 70% of the aderal kids didn't keep up through the year.

>>5690960
>because it takes a mathematician to appreciate math while anyone can appreciate art is pretty far off base.
This will be the third time I say this: I never defended that idea. That would be like saying that a novel isn't a work of art ebcause you have to know how to read.

>>5691144
I don't think anyone is saying it, but a lot of people are reacting to the idea of someone saying that.

>>5688551
yes, except for the "sole" intent. it does other shit at the same time as well.

As did Shakespeare's plays btw, which gave him money.

>>5691487
I didn't know science had beauty over truth and morality. My HS was pretty bad in many senses.

>>5688559
holy shit how retarded are you, he said functions as in "works" nobody is fucking talking about functions.

also your definition of function is fucking highschool level (or engineer level which is pretty equivalent).

you seem too think the artistic part of mathematics is drawing fucking graphs? ar eyou kidding me?

of course math will be soulless for you, you don't understand a bit of it.

>>5688559
>They have a beginning and an end, and often the answers are very black-and-white.

Math strives for non ambiguous answers (that doesn't mean simple or black-and-white answers mind you), but your sentence clearly doesn't apply to most of analysis. Most functions don't have a beginning and an end, whatever that means, and those that do can be very puzzling.

>>5688668
>Greeks didn't have a specific word for art

Latin has ars, artis, which means "technical skill" or "practice of using and refining a technical skill".

>Still, science is about understanding reality, which has nothing to do with art.

Debatable. Nothing prevents you to say that art is a particular way to understand reality via work on sensory experience (while math is work on pure intuition and logic).

Also remember that mathematics isn't always considered a science.

>>5691508
How about articulating your speech a little bit, you sound like either one of those threads where people pretend to be japanese or someone drunk about to have a stroke.

>>5688429
/lit/ tries to talk about math

>functions
>numbers
>analysis

holy shit

just so you understand, this is like people smoking a pipe and discussing literature and going

>harry potter
>hunger games
>twilight

maybe hemingway or some popshit that's good but malinterpreted and famous for the wrong reasons would be equivalent to analysis.

but holy shit /lit/

>>5691545
I was just reading about this. Ars had a very wide meaning, I ahve it as "any human activity with a useful result, wih a practical mean over a theoric one".
The closer the greeks had was techné, the obvious root of technician and technology; "technetos" is used to refer to anything that is artificial, a craftman or architect would be called "tekton". I'd really like if the greek name fag could show up to expand on this.

However, during roman times artis was used to refer to a skilful way of doing any job. In the first century is the first recorded mention of beauty as a part of artistic production with Vitruvio saying that architecture "must be made in such a way that it achieves strenght (firmitas), utility (utilitas) and beauty (venustas)" [I'm translating a translation, you can take those words as you want].
The whole concet of art as we understand it now actually comes from catholicism and it was a huge deal for the enlightenment to justify it without using the word god, we're still struggling to take the metaphisics out of the art. That's what I meant when I said they didn't have a word for what we call art, it wasn't a "thing".

>>5691567
>People don't have a deep understanding of every single thing.
i get that it's bothering when someone tries to defend something and does it poorly, but I don't see why you'd expect us to have an understanding of math beyond HS. Some anon may actually be studying math, but the amount of people who
>Study math
>Likes reading
>Dedicates daily time to discuss reading
>Lurks 4chan
is unsurprisingly low

>>5691638
Replace mean with meening, I'm sorry, I had to keep checking the book and failed to re read the post. I hope I didn't hurt english too much.

>>5691641
Do you feel someone is uncultured and uneducated if he has never read Shakespeare, Hemingay, Borges? What if he had never read a single full book?

The level of scientific ignorace present among the people in the humanities is not even comparable to that, it's closer to someone not being able to read anything that uses a vocabulary that's not entirely monosyllabic. It is embarrasing and unforgiveable. Sadly it's a cultural thing, scientific ignorance is for some reason not frowned upon. Just wanted to let you know you're retarded and you sound retarded. (not you specifically, just everyone on this thread going hurrrr functions numbersss)

In passing,

There's this essay or talk or quote or someshit by some famous writer or scientist or someshit that discusses this very topic, anyone know what i'm talking about?, where to find it?

>>5691669
Do you really feel we live in a society that favors humanities over stem?

>>5691679
Not him, but those college divisions are rather silly. We live in a society of separation (which also implies articulation) of labor. Both humanitards and stemorons are useful, for differents needs. People have trouble finding a job after focusing on humanities in college because a) everyone has trouble getting a job these days b) college often sucks, training and education-wise c) they often suck as far as wrok ethic and intellectual rigor are concerned.

So it's not a matter of stem over humanities, or the other way around. It's a matter of what people are expected to know. A middle-class urbanite adult nowadays is expected to have read at least a few books by canonical authors but will be forgiven for having trouble with the concept of square root.

>>5691641
As far as I can tell I'm the only one in that case.

I'm even dumber than most of you, by the way.

>>5691700
I minored in Math and majored in English so that makes 2 of us.

I haven't posted in this thread though even though I love the essay OP mentioned, because the thread seemed stupid.

>>5691711

math and music double major, i like to read too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3BlFZWJNA

this is how this thread made me feel at the beggining,

then i liked the anti-antistem posts

if you think that math isn't a art form than you probably didn't study in depth enough

math can be super beautiful

>>5691694
I think there was a time in which people were expected to know more. Seinfeld had jokes about War and Peace (by name only, of course, but it's the fact they even mention it) but your 50's schlock will have a housewife listening to opera in the radio, talking about books with friends and trying her hand at painting. In a similar sense there used to be lots of hobbist electromechanics magazines and it wasn't a rare thing for a middle class man to be able to build a circuit, for example.

But still, you can't be surprised that loosers on line don't know about complex subjects. You're taking it as /lit/'s fault for not having a wider knowledge when most boards would be the same without the literature/philosophy (rarely both) knowledge. People debate about gamergate and believe in advertisement that looks like news and reads like ads in /v/ and /co/ will jump at your throat if you expect them to know history of medium they chose to like.

Most Mathematicians don't take art seriously so why do they give a shit?

>>5691730
Your mom can also be super beautiful, but she isn't art.

>>5691742

Autism.

>>5691730

How deep do you have to get? I studied it at university and saw no sign of it.

>>5688559
>Functions tend to be very...linear.
>Math = Linear Functions
>Math, to me, tends to be...soulless

This is so quaint...

>>5691769
let me guess: you did not take classes for math majors but rather for engineers; you saw some problem based calculus where you derived, integrated, and maybe even used functions of multiples variables; you say linear algebra where you were asked to do some retarded algorithms to get retarded and meaningless answers; you might've advanced a bit further and used complex numbers in your calculations. this is all retarded, boring, and a disgusting violation of mathematics.

"university math" is not deep math, you have to study pure, proof-based math if you want to find beauty.

>>5691813
You could had presented your point without being an asshole and it would been better. Did someone kick your dog or something?

>>5691813
>"university math" is not deep math, you have to study pure, proof-based math if you want to find beauty.

Not who you replied to, but personally I found a lot more excitement and 'beauty' studying applied maths than pure maths.

Coming up with a solution to a physical problem using unconventional methods, or by combining seemingly unrelated methods always impressed me. The solutions were also related to a real world problem, so it felt like I was doing magic.

While doing proofs felt like I was just doing sudoku puzzles. There wasn't any "power" to them if that makes any sense.

>>5691849
>Coming up with a solution to a physical problem using unconventional methods, or by combining seemingly unrelated methods always impressed me. The solutions were also related to a real world problem, so it felt like I was doing magic.

"I like it" doesn't mean something is art, for fucks sake. You can get enjoyment from many things that aren't art, like eating an ice cream, tasting sugar isn't a work of art.

>>5689815
i've never read something more true