Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Bathing Ghosts

Here is a Proportional Poem titled "Salvation". This was inspired by my recent visit to the Korean Zen Temple Songgwangsa

The image above is a detail from the image below

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Kaz,

Here are some related posts on my blog:

Analogy, Ethics, Cooperation, Evolution, and the Golden Ratio

Beyond Proportional Analogy

Analogy and Logic

Peter.

Kaz Maslanka said...

Hi Peter,
These are fabulous links and I thank you for turning me on to them. It also helps illuminate the difference between proportional poems and proportional analogies. To illustrate here is a proportional analogy : “Proportional poems are to proportional analogies as poetic metaphor is to analogous metaphor.” This statement illuminates another difference between poetry and mathematics. ( I will add this to my list) I also plan to address your response to my list in the future. Unfortunately I am so focused on an upcoming, March 2010, one man show in NYC that I may not get to it till after the show. Maybe I can get to it sooner but I have a mountain of work in front of me.
Your LRA concept is extremely interesting and it makes me believe that a good proportional poem must have a low relational similarity number.
I would imagine that you would think that proportional poems are the same thing as proportional analogies but I don’t see them that way. Proportional analogies are primarily interested in the ‘analogy’ between the source domain and target domain whereas proportional poems are more interested in the ‘conflation’ of the source domain and the target domain. Again this points at another difference between the purpose of science and art.
I really appreciate you turning me on to the idea of “Golden Proportional Poems” (dang why didn’t I think of that - HA) That will also be added to the taxonomy of mathematical poetry structures.
I also want to mention that Lakoff’s book “Where mathematics comes from” is a gem! I love that book
Thanks again,
Kaz

Anonymous said...

Hi Kaz,

Thanks for your replies.

Proportional analogies are primarily interested in the ‘analogy’ between the source domain and target domain whereas proportional poems are more interested in the ‘conflation’ of the source domain and the target domain.

Your "conflation" sounds like what cognitive linguists call "conceptual blending". Analogy-making and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) are arguably special cases of the more general "conceptual blending". See:

Wikipedia: Conceptual Blending

The Way We Think

Peter.

Visit the National Gallery of Writing