Patricia and I were talking last night about math and the words used describe things mathematical, like elegant and charmed.

I have always been struck that one of the simplest and most basic relations in mathematics results in a truly irrational number. The circle is arguably the earliest and by far the easiest form to draw. Pick a point, stretch a string and draw a circle around the point. Yet, in our mathematics, the relationship between the length of the string and the circumfrence of the circle is pi. Mathmeticians have computed the value of pi to a gazillion places, and still no pattern emerges. It is a random number.

This leads me to two possible conclusions. The first is that our system of mathematics is inherently flawed since the measurement of a fundamental relationship results in randomness.

The second is that our system of mathematics is correct and thereby recognizes that a full description of the universe depends on the intertwining of the rational and the irrational. It is a marriage of understanding and idicates the a priori necessity of both. The inability to measure art is no worse than the inability to measure pi.

More.