Category: Language

Subtile finesse de la notation…

For a long time (since I first heard of it around 1990), I thought that the terminology “Property (T)” was a completely arbitrary name, and no better than the thousand notions of “admissible thingummy” or “good khraboute” which sprinkle too many mathematics papers. Then I learnt a few years ago that the “T” was supposed to refer to the Ttrivial representation, since — in a suitable language — the property is about the trivial representation of a group G.

This was already better. But much more recently, I learnt from S. Mozes that the typography “(T)” itself was not some random choice, but was meant to express the fact that the trivial representation T is supposed to be alone in some open set, incarnated as an open interval (so one should read () as in (a,b))…

A direct corollary is that the right translation in French is, of course, Property ]T[.

By the way, I personally much prefer the ]a,b[, [a,b], ]a,b], etc, notation for intervals, but I’m told that many find this ugly beyond belief and much prefer the (a,b), (a,b], etc, style…

Citation identification request

A few years ago, I read somewhere the following line

The baker can not (or does not?) testify to his own dough,

in a context suggesting strongly that it was a fairly classical quote (possibly of Talmudic origin?) but without more identification. Since Google does not provide much help in this case, does anyone recognize it? (A blank “Yes” is not a suitable answer).

Kepler

I think I will safely eschew any controversy in this post by stating that there are more songs about love than about science. It is therefore nice to be able to add the fairly recent opera/oratorio “Kepler”, composed by Philip Glass, to that second select list. I have to admit that I have been listening to it almost obsessively in the last few weeks. Indeed, how often does one hear an enthusiastic chorus singing with gusto such rousing lines as

Numerus, quantitas et motus orbium!

Number, quantity and circular motion!

or declaiming the basis of the scientific method

Zuerst
entwerfen wir uns
in den Hypothesen
ein Bild
von der Natur der Dinge.
Dann konstruieren wir,
den Calculus,
die Weise der Berechnung.
So demonstrieren wir
In Folge die Bewegungen.
Und schliesslich pruefen wir,
den Weg zurueckverfolgend,
die wahren Regeln
unserer Rechnung

At first
We sketch [See the first comment below for this change]
With hypotheses
An image
Of the nature of things.
Then we construct,
The calculus,
The way of computing.
Thus we demonstrate
The motions.
Lastly, we check
By retracing the path [Strangely this was not translated in the original libretto, see the 6th comment]
The true rules
Of our calculation.

These quotes are in Latin and German, since P. Glass, as he often does, uses the original language for his texts, and in that case most of the libretto (written by Martina Winkel) is taken literally from Kepler’s own writings, interspersed with bits of German baroque poetry to put him in the context of his time and place.

[I’ve changed a bit the German translation in the second case from what is in the Libretto, where some constructions like “We place us in the hypotheses” seemed a bit strange; any better attemps at translating the German are welcome in the comments!] I just changed this piece following a suggestion from the first commenter below, and added the missing third-before-last line, as suggested by another commenter

While waiting for the DVD, I had a look at Youtube; and — marvel! — some ingenious soul has put there the full recording of the opera, presumably as it appeared on Austrian television some time in 2009 or 2010. As I’m not sure about the legality of this, I’ll abstain from putting a link, but searching “Kepler Glass” on the site will lead you to it quite quickly. (There are two separate movies for the two acts; the first quote above is located around 12:50 mn in the first act, and the second appears around 39:10). (5.2.2011: it seems that these have now been removed from Youtube, which is probably not surprising; fortunately, the DVD will come out in late February.)

(Note: I am aware that in certain rarefied circles, the music of Philip Glass is considered to be just one step above elevator music, but I am personally completely philistinate in that respect, and will not countenance comments along these lines…)

Utilizing makes master

French people, as some of you may have noticed, can be a bit fractious when it comes to language use. I usually don’t care myself about real or perceived anglicisms (saying “conférence” instead of “colloque“, oh the horror!) but I’ve recently become susceptible to one special case, which gives me an idea of why people may take this kind of things so seriously.

I speak here of what seems to be a new rash of use of the verb “utilize” in English. Every time I read it, I shudder from head to foot — why not use the simpler, rounder and altogether nicer “use“? Psychologically, this is somewhat amusing because, after all, “utiliser” is the French version of the word, and also I don’t mind “utility” at all. I have the impression that for some reason I get annoyed because I don’t really know how to parse or say the word internally (where is the accent?), and this might be just because I have never (that I remember) heard this word used in a way which would make it sound good.

The other question is whether it is really something new, or happening more often, or if — somehow — I just managed to miss it before? (According to Google, it seems “utilize” is rather decreasing in use at the moment; but maybe it is rising in certain places, e.g. on the internet, and not so much in books?)