New Math
In
the sixth grade I learned to count
In
base seven,
From
yellow printshop bound experimental textbooks
Tested
on us
By
the School Mathematics Study Group.
We
wrote seven squared plus seven plus two as 112.
A
touring outdoor exhibit came through town,
Parked
in our local strip mall by the Army, Navy,
Air
Force and Marines. At its heart was
a full scale
Gunmetal
replica of Big Boy,
The
Nagasaki atomic bomb.
I
climbed up on it, using handholds courteously welded
To
the bomb casing in an exercise of public good will.
No
sevens here, only one--one ponderous mass
Maker
of zero.
One--from
one and from zero I heard
Peano's
postulates explained
Meticulously
A
few years later in a Berkeley summer workshop
Put
on by Pentagon money,
To
harvest the choicest fruit
Of
California's New Math youth.
All
of the countable universe unraveled
From
the barest minimum of starting assumptions.
Giuseppe
Peano started with nothing but
One
and
Zero;
Bertrand
Russell found here the roots of his work.
That
was the summer Ted Kaczynski arrived at Berkeley
His
lecture a plodding nothing I no longer recall;
His
subsequent outpouring a tight-lipped blast
Spat
out against the fructile tempest of technospace.
Zeros
and ones become bits and bytes
Become
networks of discourse unselective
Even
the Unabomber Manifesto finding eternal
Sanctuary
in the global web spun of
Nothing
And
unity.
Cyberspace
is base ten grafted on base two
The
hundred year calendar of Roman time
Expected
to make millennial mud
As
99 rolls over to a retrograde 00.
Does
nature, or maybe our Sabbath-conditioned mind
(Jung's
Collective Unconscious)
Speak
in base seven?
Seven
squared years to the day
After
Alamogordo
(So
big for our britches; so puny are the
Gadgets
Of
man)
The
first fragments
Born
from rupture of the Schumacher-Leyy comet
Tore
Earth-sized holes in the atmosphere of Jupiter,
Each
outshining all energy ever released by human endeavor.
I
notice things like that. Will I
spread it
All
over the Net? No way--they'll put
two and
Forty-nine
together and think I'm from Area 51.
Click here to return to Profile of Mark, a 60's Child of the New Math or, if you prefer, click below for pi365 home.