The Figure that Stands Behind Figures
by Robert Kaplan
Product Description
Based on his Inaugural Lecture for the Institute For Figuring in April 2003, The Figure that Stands Behind Figures is a charmingly erudite essay from mathematician Robert Kaplan, about the history of figuration and the emergence of the mathematical concept of a generalized placeholder.
From the whimsical drolleries that encrusted the margins of medieval texts to the geometry of tiling patterns, Kaplan traces the evolution of the “figure” in Western thought and challenges readers to discover for themselves the protean algebraic figure that stands in for other figures.
If you turn away from crystal perfection, here are the beautiful unfoldings of our decorative sense, whose triangles and squares and polygons proliferate outward, filling space with their little symmetries to a more complicated symmetrical whole.
An Institute For Figuring publication, 2005, paperback, 65 pages