Dainotto, in the above epigraph, characterizes as "positionality." Simms's poems consistently explore the possibility that one might "pose as a
topologist" who "speaks from one specific place" or, as Dainotto has alternately phrased this pose (referencing "Critical Regionalism" rather than Simms), it amounts to imagining "the possibility to return, in short, to a past idea of culture as cultus, of literature as the local crop of a regionalized genius loci" (p.
Like other "pure" mathematics, the work of the
topologist normally happens entirely in the mind.
Like the Euler characteristic, homology works best on shapes built up out of what
topologists call simplices, namely, corner points, lines, polygons, and their higher-dimensional analogs--objects that are hard to visualize but can be precisely described using mathematical formulas.
One early procedure was discovered in 1967 by Bernard Morin, a blind
topologist at the Louis-Pasteur University in Strasbourg, France.
Jones, 37, a
topologist at the University of California, Berkeley, is best known for his work in knot theory (SN: 5/21/88, p.328).
One problem, first considered in 1908 by
topologist Heinrich Tietze, concerns determining whether two knots that look different are really the same knot when untangled.
French mathematician Francois Apery, a student of
topologist Bernard Morin at the University of Strasbourg, finally worked out the equations in 1984.
To a
topologist, a knot in a formal sense is any simple closed curve embedded in a three-dimenstional space.
'
Topologists', in response, argued that globalization is relentlessly re-configuring power within and beyond territories and metric distance (Allen, 2009, 2011; Jones and Jessop, 2010).
(An old joke has it that
topologists can't distinguish a coffee cup from a doughnut--both are surfaces punctured by a single hole.) But he was drawn into physics in 1988 after a colleague discovered a connection between some of the math describing the topology of knots and a theory explaining certain quantum phenomena.
The seminar will host His Eminence Sheikh Ahmed bin Hamad al-Khalili, the Sultanate's Grand Mufti who will talk about the convergence of views between the
topologists and the doctors in respects to the sharia issues.