Was reading a paper on Continuum Hypothesis. Written by this seemingly boundless and incredibly eclectic person, Nancy McGough. Been reading some stuff by her of late. And feeling a little better about the almost-self-imposed-is-a-joke feeling of intellectual tardiness.
While the paper itself goes into mathematical tangents that will take me some time to fully digest. This is what she begins with. A quote from Einstein.
From pg. 83 of his Relativity: The Special and the General Theory
‘ The surface of a marble table is spread out in front of me. I can get from any one point on this table to any other point by passing continuously from one point to a “neighboring” one, and repeating this process a (large) number of times, or, in other words, by going from point to point without executing “jumps.” I am sure the reader will appreciate with sufficient clearness what I mean here by “neighbouring” and by “jumps” (if he is not too pedantic). We express this property of the surface by describing the latter as a continuum. ‘
To read the paper, go to http://www.ii.com/math/ch/
More on N McG later.
