Maths and Storytelling
In Our Time
BBC
4.6 • 9.9K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 1999
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the relationship between maths and storytelling. Is there a hidden mathematical logic in stories? The American mathematician John Allen Paulos thinks so. It’s an intriguing thought. Patterns, measurement, the logic of jokes, numerology from Leviticus to Alice in Wonderland, but does it really go to the square root of fiction? According to anthropologists, both have similar origins - in our prehistoric ancestors’ need to measure and assess the world around them. Both mathematics and stories need a shape and structure to make any sense. But does it go further than that? Is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature or to reduce a joke to an algebraic equation? Or are literary imagination and scientific substance irreconcilable?With John Allen Paulos, Presidential Scholar of Mathematics, Temple University, Philadelphia and author of Once Upon a Number - The hidden mathematical logic of stories; Marina Warner, novelist, historian, critic, former Reith Lecturer and Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College, London.
Transcript
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| 0:46.5 | the program. Hello I'm joined today by John Alan Paulos and Marina Warner to examine the links between mathematics and storytelling. |
| 0:55.4 | According to anthropologists, they have similar origins in our prehistoric ancestors need to |
| 1:00.1 | measure and assess the world around them. |
| 1:02.1 | Both mathematics and stories need a shape |
| 1:04.0 | and structure to make any sense. But does it go any further than that? Is it possible to |
| 1:08.5 | apply mathematical logic to literature or to reduce a joke to an algebraic equation or of the literary imagination and scientific science? to University of Philadelphia. He's the author of enumeracy, mathematical illiteracy and its consequences, |
| 1:25.5 | which became an instant bestseller and was subsequently translated into 11 languages. |
| 1:29.8 | Described as America's favorite mathematician, his latest book is called Once Upon a Number, |
| 1:35.4 | The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories, which looks at the relationships which tie the realm |
| 1:40.0 | of mathematics and the world of stories together. |
| 1:43.0 | The novelist historian and critic Marina Warner is less sure of the links and similarities between |
| 1:47.1 | mathematics and storytelling, a former wreath lecturer and currently a visiting professor at |
| 1:51.5 | Birkbeck College London, her latest book, |
| 1:53.5 | No Go The Bogiman, was a study of fear, and she was a special interest in legends, |
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