Pat's Prologues: Introductions to the First Two Airings of Math Medley, A Radio Talk Show.

Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal #26 25 stone in Basle. Today, the double helix carries both a biological meaning as well as an intimation of human destiny. In my childhood, the circle persisted as a potent magic figure in the playtime doggerel "Make a magic circle and sign it with a dot." The interested reader will find thousands of allusions to the phrase "magic circle" on the Web. Magic ellipses or rectangles are less frequent. The Buddhist mandalas which are objects of spiritual contemplation, embody highly stylized geometrical arrangements. The amulets and talismans that are worn on the body, placed on walls, displayed in cars; the ankhs, the crosses, the hexagrams, the outlined fish, the horseshoes, the triangular abracadabra arrangements and magical squares, the sigils (magical signs or images) of which whole dictionaries were compiled in the 17th century, the hex signs placed on house exteriors, all point to geometry in the service of religious or quasi-religious practice. There is a multitude of geometrical figures signs employed in kabbalistic practices, each associated with stars, planets, metals, stones, spirits, demons, and whose mode of production and use is specified rigorously. Wallis Budge, student of Near Eastern antiquities wrote: According to Cornelius Agrippa [physician and magician, 1486-1535], it is necessary to be careful when using a magical square as an amulet, that it is drawn when the sun or moon or the planet is exhibiting a benevolent aspect, for otherwise the amulet will bring misfortune and calamity upon the wearer instead of prosperity and happiness. Let semanticists and semioticists explain the relationship between our geometrical symbols and our psyches for it lies deeper than simple designation (e.g., crescent = Islam). The geometrical swastika, which over the millennia and cultures has carried different interpretations, is now held in abhorrence by most Americans. The memory of World War II is certainly at work here, but the geometry can go "abstract" and its meaning become detached from an original historic context. Why has Salvador Dali (1904-1989) in his large painting Corpus Hypercubus in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, placed a crucifixion against a representation of a four dimensional cube? Art historian Mar-tin Kemp has commented: Dali's painting does stand effectively for an age-old striving in art, theology, mathematics, and cosmology for access to those dimensions that lie beyond the visual and tactile scope of the finite spaces of up-and-down, left and right, and in-and-out that …