Re: Marie Jean Faucounau sues me for at least 8,487 Swiss Francs

frgn_at_bluemail.ch
Date: 12/08/04 

Date: 8 Dec 2004 00:26:18 -0800

I got something to say, I got plenty to say, I take my time
for writing well considered articles, being no native speaker
of English I work double as much, I make even the most demanding
topics understandable and accessible for interested readers,
and I care about the layout, which is almost as important as
a well articulated language. Google beta makes a mess of my
messages. So please look up the original.

My adventures in the math-history list, Jul/Aug 1997, part 6

One member of the math-history list was Julio Gonzalez Cabillon.
He knew so much about math history that someone mused whether
he was a consortium of people writing under the same name? Julio
wrote a message in Spanish. I took offense and gave back, making
a joke on his behalf, illustrating the difference between the
mathematical object a, which is identical to every other a,
so that a = a = a ..., whereas human beings are both equal and
different, so that an equation such as jgc1 = jgc2 = jgc3 ...
would only partly be right, because jgc1 to jgc11 are not only
equal, they are also different in many respects. Now Julio took
offense and announced to leave the list. Which raised storm
of protest. No, Julio, stay, don't leave! And of course it was
my fault that he wished to leave. Everybody was on his side,
nobody on mine. I had no intention at all to drive Julio away,
and I wished to explain my joke. However, by then I was already
banned from the list, and so I had to use a pseudonym. I chose
"Leonardo Bigollo Pisano," better known as Leonardo Fibonacci.
I showed up in the list as LBG and said about this:

My name Bigollo has a double meaning: one who traveled
widely, and moron. Being the son of a traveling salesman
from Pisa, I had been born in northern Africa, have been
raised there, and attended a Moorish school where I have
been taught interesting algorithms of which you never
heard. And as a man I traveled widely myself, to Egypt
and Syria, where I gathered and reconstructed further
old and very old algorithms, and brought them to Paris,
where the professors only laughed at me, and in Italy
it wasn't much better, so I adopted the name "Bigollo":
I traveled widely, and I am treated by some as if I was
a moron. They do not understand what I say, and therefore
I am the moron, what is only logiccal ;-) Well then, I see
you got a moron on board the math-history list, one FG.
He managed to have everybody against him, and he struggles
not only with all of you but with his English as well. He
offended Julio, but he didn't really mean to do so, his
joke was in fact respect spiced with irony: he simply can't
believe that one single man could know so much in so many
fields of math history! And he got to tell you some quite
interesting things, much in my spirit, so please allow him
to go on posting to your list. Not everybody who looks like
a moron and behaves like a moron and writes like a moron is
actually a moron, a bigollo. Yours truly, Leonardo Bigollo
Pisano, aka Leonardo Fibonacci

Julio didn't get my excuse. Later on we exchanged a couple of
e-mails. He told me that he was really offended; he has no easy
life at Montevideo, and then to be turned into an entire soccer
team of Julio Gonzalez Cabillons ... I told him that I had felt
offended by his Spanish lines, and he replied that he was just
trying to tell me how to convey my ideas in such a forum. To
which I replied that I did not get his advice correctly, then,
while he misunderstood my joke, which was by far more respect
than irony. Well, and last year, around Christmas, a student
asked my help regarding several questions on early mathematics.
She was enthusiastic over my website, informed Julio Gonzalez
Cabillon, who, long ago, had founded the online forum Historia
Matematica, and Julio sent me kind season's greetings. Now
I think our former conflict has been settled. He is very happy
with his new forum, and I am happy to have established my body
of early mathematical methods on my website and in several fora
and archives, where some of my ideas might survive and find
another "bigollo" to carry on, hopefully.

Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch

> My adventures in the math-history list, Jul/Aug 1997, part 5
>
> Human made things have their scientific correlates. A radio
> has a scientific correlate in Clark Maxwell's electro-magnetic
> field equations; a GPS device, used for example for mapping
> the ruins and further archaeological finds on the seafloor
> in front of Alexandria, has a scientific correlate in Albert
> Einstein's relativity theory; and in a similar way, I dare say,
> the Ziqqurats of Sumer and the Egyptian pyramids have their
> scientific correlate in mathematical techniques and algorithms
> as I am reconstructing them since 1979 (first number column),
> 1991/92 (royal cubit and 'magic wands,' later on called Horus
> cubits), 1993/94 (calculating the circle on the basis of the
> Sacred Triangle 3-4-5), 1996-2002 (Rhind Mathematical Papyrus,
> Babylonian clay tablets YBC 7829 and Plimpton 322). Must I add
> that such work can't be published? Not necessary? Thank you.
>
> In my previous messages I introduced some of my number patterns.
> Another means of early mathematics had been, I believe, number
> sequences providing handy values of irrational numbers such
> as pi.
>
> The number of the circle is less than 4, but a little more than
> 3. Write 4 above 1, and add repeatedly 3 above 1, and look up
> my message in the original format, for beta google makes a mess
> of my number patterns):
>
> 4 (plus 3) 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28
> 1 (plus 1) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
>
> Write 3 above 1, and add repeatedly 22 above 7:
>
> 3 (plus 22) 25 47 69 91 113 135 157 179 201 223
> 1 (plus 7) 8 15 22 29 36 43 50 57 64 71
>
> 245 267 289 311 333 355 377
> 78 85 92 99 106 113 120
>
> Write 9 above 3, and add repeatedly 19 above 6:
>
> 9 (plus 19) 28 47 66 ... 256
> 3 (plus 6) 9 15 21 ... 81
>
> A famous problem from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus says that
> a square of side 8 and a circle of diameter 9 have (nearly)
> the same area. The implicit value of pi is found in the above
> sequence: 256/81 = 3.1604... This value is often dubbed the
> ancient Egyptian pi. However, my interpretation of over 65
> problems from the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus led me to the
> conviction that the Egyptians didn't use just one single value,
> but plenty of values provided by the above and further number
> sequences, which were also known to the Babylonians (see my
> interpretations of YBC 7289 and Plimpton 322 on my website).
>
> Number columns and sequences allow easy solutions to difficult
> problems. An example. Let the side of a square measure 10 royal
> cubits. Draw a circle around it. How long is the circumference?
> The side of the square measures 10 royal cubits or 70 palms.
> My number column for the square root of 2 proposes a diagonal
> of 99 palms. Now look up one of the above pi sequences. In the
> lower line is found the number 99, above stays the number 311,
> hence the circumference of the circle around the square of side
> length 10 royal cubits measures practically 311 palms, with
> a tiny mistake of less than 1/7 millimeters! A brillant result,
> no formulas required, all one has to do is to look up a number
> column and a number sequence.
>
> But of course my number columns are trash (John Horton Conway,
> then holder of the Von Neumann Chair at Princeton); listening
> to me and Domingo Gomez Morin pondering the realm of number
> patterns is like listening to a flea and a louse arguing
> (can't remember who wrote that); arguing with me is throwing
> pearls before swine (David Fowler of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
> an expert on Greek mathematics at Platon's Academy); my work
> is numerology, pyramidology, and so on, and so on, and so on.
>
> My crime was to attest a mathematical knowledge to the Egyptians
> and Babylonians. Mentioning the number of the circle pi and the
> golden number phi in the context of the Great Pyramid at Giza
> was bad enough, but to show how these numbers could have been
> approximated, and quite easily so, was the worst of crimes.
>
> Fred Rickey, a teaching professor of mathematics and the "owner"
> of the math-history list, informed me via e-mail that Egyptian
> mathematics doesn't really belong to the history of mathematics.
> I went on considering Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics parts
> of the history of mathematics, most valuable ones, worth of being
> explored in a fresh way, by means of new approaches, and this,
> of course, meant my finl banning from the math-history list.
>
> I go on believing that a prospering global society requires,
> among other things, a fair history of civilization.
>
> Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch
>
>
> > My adventures in the math-history list, Jul/Aug 1997, part 4
> >
> > Listening to me and Domingo Gomez Morin discussing our number
> > patterns is like listening to a louse and a flea arguing ...
> > Very nice, indeed. So that is the way Ivy League professors
> > and their allies are discussing online.
> >
> > I was attempting and leading a scientific discussion, exploring
> > the "wondergarden" of early mathematics, and when I showed them
> > that number patterns are / have been / could have been a tool
> > of early mathematics, worth of being considered, their bare
> > existence being of interest, even allowing a systematic method
> > for calculating the circle, much simpler and more accessible
> > than the one by Archimedes - well, when I was doing so, hoping
> > to raise interest, John Horton Conway showed up and turned all
> > my ideas down.
> >
> > Why should my number column from 1979, which allows an easy
> > approximation of the square root of 2, be so bad? Its numbers
> > are the precise equivalent of the continued fraction for the
> > square root of 2, but my number column is much simpler, no
> > fractions involved, just whole numbers, a simple algorithm
> > requiring additions and multiplications by 2 (adding a number
> > to itself), and elegantly explaining the marvelous Babylonian
> > value 1;24,51,10 for the square root of 2, as found on the
> > famous Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289.
> >
> > John Horton Conway simply told me that the Babylonians did not
> > use such an algorithm. They just applied the trial and error
> > method.
> >
> > I asked him to perform such a calculation. He just repeated his
> > verdict. I asked him again. To no avail. Finally he called my
> > number columns "trash."
> >
> > I found my first number column back in 1979, while interpreting
> > Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper wallpainting, examinging its
> > ideal geometry, and the one of the former refectory of Santa
> > Marie delle Grazie at Milan (a perfect match). The lunettes
> > above the painting are sized according to the partition of
> > a square with an inscribed octagon. I tried several numbers
> > that could explain their relative size:
> >
> > small large small
> > 5 7 5 sum 17
> > 7 12 7 sum 24
> > 12 17 12 sum 41
> > 17 24 17 sum 58
> >
> > Thomas Brachert, by then at the SIK Zurich, had found the basic
> > grid 6 by 12 units. A finer grid of 12 by 24 smaller units would
> > suggest the solution 7 10 7 (sum 24) which is confirmed by the
> > actual measurements (at least on my small reproductions).
> >
> > Now I had another look at my numbers and arranged them thus:
> >
> > 5 7 10
> > 12 17 24
> >
> > There was a pattern showing that allowed expansion:
> >
> > 5 7 10
> > 12 17 24
> > 29 41 58
> > 70 99 140 and so on
> >
> > Then I completed my number pattern upward and got my number column:
> >
> > 1 1 2
> > 2 3 4
> > 5 7 10
> > 12 17 24
> > 29 41 58
> > 70 99 140 and so on
> >
> > Delve into the problem of approximating the square root of 2
> > and you will see this or a similar pattern emerge, inevitably.
> > Compare lists of doubled squares and simple squares, allow
> > differences of 1, and you obtain the ladder of Eratosthenes.
> > Allow mistakes of 1 or 2 and you obtain my above numbers.
> >
> > John Horton Conway and his allies believe that the history of
> > the square root of 2 began with the Greek continued fraction;
> > before the Greeks there were only lucky guesses. I showed him
> > that my number column is the exact numerical equivalent of
> > the continued fraction (1,2,2,2,...) but much simpler, well
> > accessible to the Egyptians and Babylonians, and most probably
> > used by them long before Greek mathematics began to flourish.
> > Saying _that_ was my crime ...
> >
> > I am interested in very simple methods; in the simplest ways
> > of calculating the square, equilateral triangle, cube, double
> > square, and circle. I found those methods. Why me, why not them?
> > Because they are blinded by the Greek dogma. Which dogma stays
> > in the way both of a fair history of civilization and of easy
> > ways of teaching and learning basic mathematics and geometry.
> >
> > Franz Gnaedinger www.seshat.ch