¶ Imaginary
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Index Entry
Imaginary:
"In speaking of his ‘purely imaginary straight line’ the mathematician uses four words all of which were invented by man to accommodate his need to communicate his experiences to self or others:
“Imaginary: ‘Image-inary.’ This means man’s communication of what he thinks it is that he thinks his brain is doing with the objects of his experience. His discovery of general conceptual principles characterizing all of his several experiences-- as the rock, having insideness and outsideness, the many pebbles, having their corners knocked off and developing roundness: he thinks there could be pure ‘roundness’ and thus imagined a perfect sphere.”
¶ Citations
- RBF to EJA, Somerset Club, Boston, 22 April 1971
