deodands

Turing's letter to Coxeter

Scott Hotton kindly pointed out this Turing quotation:

According to the theory I am working on now there is a continuous advance from one pair of parastichy numbers to another, during the growth of a single plant ... You will be inclined to ask how one can move continuously from one integer to another. The reason is this - on any specimen there are different ways in which the parastichy numbers can be reckoned; some are more natural than others. During the growth of a plant the various parastichy numbers come into prominence at different stages. One can also observe the phenomenon in space (instead of in time) on a sunflower. It is natural to count the outermost florets as say 21+34, but the inner ones might be counted as 8+13. Church is hopelessly confused about it all, and I don't know any really satisfactory account, though I hope to get myself one in about a year’s time. (From Coxeter (1972)).

This quote comes from a paper of the wonderful Donald Coxeter, who quotes it at the beginning of a paper on (from memory) some of the number-theoretic properties of Fibonacci lattices. He died at 96. (Irritating for me because that was two weeks before I heard of this quote and tired to contact him, but no doubt more irritating for him).

Googling to see if this quote has appeared anywhere else, I am amused but not surprised by the prevalence of google hits for "Church is hopelessly confused".

Posted by Jonathan at May 28, 2004 09:19 PM