Article ID: CBB150662150

The Hard Math of Beauty: Gerard Manley Hopkins and "Spectral Numbers" (2021)

unapi

This article examines number-space synesthesia (NSS), a phenomenon first identified by Francis Galton in 1880. Experienced by a small percentage of the population, NSS involves the capacity to visualize numerals in highly personalized spatial formations. The article argues that the Victorian interest in NSS is tied to the larger nineteenth-century interest in non-Euclidean geometry. Analyzing the contributions of the priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to his father's book The Cardinal Numbers (1887), in which the younger Hopkins describes his own experience of NSS, the article demonstrates that NSS operates in a similar way to non-Euclidean geometry by removing numbers from the realm of practical use and rendering them aesthetic objects. In the hands of Hopkins, numbers become the raw material for artistic creation.

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Authors & Contributors
Zadrozny, Sara
Wilhelm, Lindsay Puawehiwa
Barford, Megan
Amery, Fiona
Goldstein, Amanda Jo
Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Ina
Concepts
Aesthetics
Visual perception
Senses and sensation; perception
Vision
Numbers
Science and art
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
Medieval
18th century
Early modern
Enlightenment
Places
Great Britain
Germany
Spain
Italy
Europe
Institutions
British Admiralty
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