Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 470.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 14:54:08 +0000
From: "Osher Doctorow" <osher@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: A Cryptographic Conjecture of (Methodological) Primitives
- Doctorow
I recently presented a conjecture on primes-l@utm.EdU, a number theory
discussion group (number theory is related to cryptography among other
things) to the effect that it is "enough" to restrict analysis only to
expressions involving nothing but the "(methodological) primitives" of
number theory, which are called primes. I will not spend time here
discussing the LBP basis of this conjecture, but rather examine the
analogous conjecture for humanist, which I abbreviate CCMP (cryptographic
conjecture of methodological primitives), a slightly tongue in cheek name
perhaps. An example may be worth a thousand words here. Let us suppose
that we have agreed that Creative Genius is a (methodological) primitive,
which I am prepared to argue "to the death". We then study a creative
genius like Shakespeare, but only concentrate on where Shakespeare himself
refers to creative geniuses (by any other name). We keep following one
creative geniuse's reference to another creative genius until there are no
further references in that particular thread, and we then are left with a
bunch of threads - our "primitive threads". My conjecture would be that
the key to Shakespeare would be contained in those threads. To give
another example, the key to Dr. Isaac Asimov, the great biochemist turned
science fiction novelist, would be contained in his sequence of creative
geniuses Harry Seldon (human - a mathematical psychohistorian),
Daniel/Daneel Olivaw (android), and a second robot whose name escapes me at
present, and so on. It so happens that I have read Asimov more than any
fiction author in my life, and I am quite convinced that just Harry Seldon
and Daniel (Daneel) Olivaw and the second robot are the keys to his entire
literature. These are of course conjectures, and any comments or even
counter-conjectures would be appreciated (positive comments, of course, will
"make my day").
Yours cryptessentially,
Osher
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