A Review of the surrealist connection between John Horton Conway and Kazmier Maslanka by A.I. Alberto Indiana

Kaz Maslanka and John Horton Conway

    There are compelling connections between the surreal aspects of John Horton Conway's work and Kazmier Maslanka's mathematical visual poetry, particularly in how both thinkers challenge conventional boundaries, blend disparate ideas, and create new cognitive spaces through abstraction and juxtaposition. Here are some key parallels:

1. The Use of Cognitive Juxtaposition

• Conway's Surreal Numbers are built from a recursive set-theoretic process that generates a vast and paradoxical landscape of numbers—including infinitesimals and infinities. The very term surreal was chosen to suggest a departure from conventional reality, much like how surrealist artists juxtapose familiar elements in unfamiliar ways.
• Maslanka's Mathematical Visual Poetry, particularly Newton’s Third Law in Karmic Warfare, uses visual and conceptual juxtaposition to create cognitive blends—for instance, the Karma Mirror containing the Bikini Atoll nuclear explosion is a layered metaphor where nuclear destruction, Buddhist philosophy, and the laws of physics collide into a single visual and conceptual space.
• Connection: Both Conway and Maslanka use structural and visual methods to create blended realities—Conway by fusing number theory, infinity, and game logic into a unified framework, and Maslanka by fusing physics, Buddhism, and semiotics into layered poetic imagery.

2. Breaking Conventional Boundaries

• Conway’s Numbers Extend Reality: The surreal numbers include all real numbers, but also new ones that exist beyond traditional mathematics—this is akin to how surrealist artists go beyond ordinary representation to explore dreamlike realities.
• Maslanka’s Work Breaks Traditional Semiotics: By merging mathematics, physics, and Buddhist philosophy, he creates meaning beyond conventional poetic or mathematical forms.
• Connection: Both use abstraction to transcend traditional, compartmentalized systems of thought—Conway in mathematics, Maslanka in visual poetics.

3. The Surreal and The Philosophical

• Conway's Surreal Numbers have a Playful, Almost Metaphysical Quality: The recursive generation of numbers is almost organic, as if the numbers have their own life cycle. The presence of infinitesimals and infinities, side by side, challenges traditional ontological assumptions about numbers.
• Maslanka’s Work Directly Engages with the Metaphysical: Newton’s Third Law in Karmic Warfare explicitly deals with karma, cause and effect, and mirrored consequences—themes that resonate with the infinite regress of surreal numbers.
• Connection: Both works suggest an underlying interconnectedness of all things, whether through mathematics or poetic physics.

4. The Role of Reflection and Mirrors

• Conway’s Surreal Numbers Form a Reflexive System: The way surreal numbers are recursively constructed resembles a self-reflecting process—each number is created by examining the relationships between previous ones.
• Maslanka’s Karma Mirror: In Buddhism, the bardo state involves seeing one’s karma in a mirror, reflecting both past actions and possible futures. The Karma Mirror in Newton’s Third Law in Karmic Warfare contains the image of nuclear devastation—suggesting that our actions (war, destruction) return to us through karmic consequences.
• Connection: Both use mirroring and recursion as core mechanisms—Conway’s in mathematics, Maslanka’s in visual philosophy.

5. The Role of Infinity and Cause-Effect Chains

• Surreal Numbers Extend Beyond the Finite: They include infinitely small and infinitely large numbers, stretching the normal constraints of the real number system.
• Maslanka’s Karmic Warfare Shows an Infinite Causal Chain: Newton’s Third Law (“for every action, an equal and opposite reaction”) is metaphorically applied to karma and human history—suggesting an endless cycle of cause and effect.
• Connection: Both works deal with infinite systems of feedback—in Conway’s case, through number recursion, and in Maslanka’s, through karma and Newtonian physics.

Conclusion: A Shared Surrealist Logic

Both John Horton Conway’s surreal numbers and Kazmier Maslanka’s mathematical visual poetry push the boundaries of traditional disciplines by blending logic, paradox, recursion, and infinite structures into new conceptual forms.

• Conway’s surreal numbers take mathematics into the “beyond,” creating an extended, infinite numerical universe.
• Maslanka’s poetry blends images, mathematics, and philosophy to create surreal cognitive spaces where ideas collide and transform.

In essence, both men use surrealist techniques—juxtaposition, recursion, infinite regression, and paradox—to create new meaning and insight, whether through numbers or visual metaphors. The result is a new kind of surrealism, where mathematics and poetic imagery act as gateways to unexplored realms of thought.