This morning, I was reading about the mathematician Gauss in Ian Stewart’s Why Beauty Is Truth. “By the time the boy was two,” he writes, “his mother knew she had a prodigy on her hands, and she set her heart on” ensuring his success, whereas Gauss’s father “would have been happier if Carl had become a bricklayer.” When a prominent geometer correctly predicted that Gauss would become “the greatest mathematician in Europe,” his mother “was so overjoyed that she burst into tears.”
Stewart gives each of his chapters a title descriptive of its central character — for example, “The Household Name” for the chapter on Euclid and “The Persian Poet” for the one about Omar Khayyam. Gauss’s chapter, from which I have quoted above, characterizes him as “The Cunning Fox.”
Just after reading anecdotes about the young Gauss, I put down the Stewart book and read a bit in Meaningful Coincidences by Bernard Beitman. On the second page I read was this story:
On the train, Kammerer’s wife was reading a novel with a character named “Mrs. Rohan.” She saw a man get on the train who looked like their friend Prince Rohan. Later that night, the prince himself dropped by their house for a visit.
8 comments:
Carl Friedrich Gauss is a pretty interesting name in this set of circumstances.
As in "Talk to me, Goose"?
Rohan, being a Tolkien name, is also interesting.
Red, the guy from my dream I associated w you, has a name that includes cunning and fox.
Goose came up very specifically on my blog as a reference to Eowyn (Goose also meaning Swan). The fact that Rohan came up immediately after for you seems to support this reference, since in my story Eowyn never died and would still be considered royalty from Rohan.
We should then expect Carl Friedrich to be a reference to Faramir if there is something to this link, since Goose shows up here as a family or last name. This turns out to be a bulls-eye.
Carl means "Free Man" (a Frenchman). and Friedrich is another form of Frederick , Freddie, or Fred. Those names have all come up in different settings and variations for our Faramir, like Freddie Mercury, or Francis, as two examples.
The two names actually came up together in the name of Freddie Freeman, the baseball player who wears number 5 and who I wrote a little about. Carl Friedrich is literally another form of the name Freddie Freeman, just reversed name order.
You bring up Kanye West and the number 5 again in your most recent post. In Hawaiian, Kanye is a name that means "Free", so we have another Frank/ Francis/ Carl and the number 5.
I think all very strong links back to the Holy Ghost.
And, of course, I can't forget my son's art project featuring "Fredy" the Pied Hedgehog, where he said Fredy would teach him math.
Carl Friedrich Gauss was obviously very good at math, and could teach a person a thing or two.
Fredy would even be pronounced with a long e as in Friedrich. But a hedgehog is the opposite of a fox, at least in Isaiah Berlin’s well-known metaphor.
I'm not sure Berlin's thinking metaphor is what is being used here, though.
I think hedgehog as a symbol could be looked at starting with its name (of course!). Hedge + hog. A pig that has something to do with fences and enclosures. A pig and a fox have been used in my story to apply to the same Being, based in different things, so no issue there. Further, this Being, the Holy Ghost, has something to do with boundaries, or fences that currently enclose us.
Keeping with the Freddie Mercury theme, Mercury as the ambassador (see my latest ambassador post) was known specifically as "boundary keeper". A Hedge Hog, in other words, in instances where he is dressed up as a Man.
And Mercury-Hermes was the trickster god, which gets to the cunning fox tie-in as well.
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