Archive for April, 2006

Dissing Disambiguation is an interesting diatribe by a mathematician who describes himself as “a 40 year-old gay man living in a wonky world.”

He explains a field of mathematics called topology that “deals with properties of space of objects that can be stretched without tearing or gluing.” He describes a couple of objects that are particularly interesting in terms of this mathematical viewpoint… What makes this worthy of a post on No Categories? Read on…

For me, the really cool thing is the way we look at the world around us. How we are fortunate that there are people in this world who cherish the oddity all around this world–physical and otherwise. Too many people are afraid of ambiguity. They don’t like it when things can be interpreted in more than one way. This is true from things as varied as human sexuality, biblical scholarship or geometric shapes.

I say ambiguity is something to be celebrated. We are often left with alleged truisms such as ‘the truth is black and white’ or ‘the truth is simple’. To accept such statements as reality disallows for the possibility of a new point of view–a new exploration of a unique and foreign space or concept. We are complicated beings. The ambiguity that exists naturally around us could be said to lead to further complication. Instead, I choose to believe that any thing or any one can be taken for something beyond face value. Attempting to find that ambiguity or explore that topology makes me a more thoughtful (and hopefully) more caring individual.