Mathsex (updated for the holiday season)

We have previously had occasion to note the useful and informative Blogspot stats, which, by listing the search-phrases that brought surfers to this site, give a glimpse into the minds of our audience.  Recent examples (copied and pasted exactly as originally written -- some of them are rather odd):

www.quotes on truth and beauty combined

two schools of poetry are what

quousque tandem, catilina, abutemini patienzia nostra?

(that last one seems to segue into an Italian aria).

And then (* sigh *)  there are the badboys of the searchstring community.  Recent examples:

porno azawad

big boob bloopers

and, strangest of all,

mathsex

-- or perhaps it was “sexmath”, I don’t recall;  anyhow written solid, as one word.

Now, we pay very little attention to sex on this site, save in the context of evolution, or in relation to the sacramental conception of marriage, as revealed by the Holy Mother Church.   And the area of interesting intersection between sexuality and mathematics is surely of measure zero -- at least from our own Platonistic perspective, sub specie which, the truths of mathematics are as independent of mere gender  as they are of species, or of time:  truths that are as true for boys as for girls, nay, for people as for paramecia:  for that indeed is what makes math interesting.

Conceivably, what our surfer had in mind, was rather “math porn”.   For we do, not infrequently, allude to degraded popularisations of physics, philosophy, etc., under the rubrics “physics porn”, “philosophy porn”, etc.;  here the term is purely metaphorical, much the way, in the academic community, “sexy” came to mean “a topic likely to attract lots of students, and to win government grants”. 

Yet, oddly, there seems to be no such thing as “math porn” -- math discussed in a popular-populist, smoke-and-mirrors way.   Treatments of the subject for a lay audience tend to be  at worst disappointing, at best  absolutely outstanding, such as the best-selling books by John Allen Paulos or Martin Gardner, or the non-bestselling but even better books by G.H. Hardy, Jacques Hadamard,  Ian Stewart, Morris Kline, or Davis & Hersh.   On the rare occasions when the general-audience press notices some mathematical accomplishment, as (justifiedly)  the proof, not long ago, of the long-outstanding “Fermat’s Last Theorem”, the account is straightforward:  naturally giving no insight into the logic or structure of the accomplishment, for that would be far too difficult, but telling the readers what they need to know, with no fuss about it.   For there to be anything like “math porn”, on a level with the unending and shallow sensationalistic treatment of (say) the Higgs Boson in physics, you would need instead  to have periodic tub-thumping reports of purported proofs (“sightings” of possible proofs, or musings about rumored future proofs), followed by back-to-the-drawing-board retractions, together with a heavy focus on personalities, rivalries, and dish (“Andrew Wiles reveals his private fantasies”).   Oh plus the topic would have to be renamed so as to be headline-ready (just as the Higgs Boringon was dubbed the “God particle”) -- say, “The Erection Theorem” or “The Clitoris Conjecture”.  

In sum, for all you “mathsex” stringsearchers out there:  Sorry,  folks, there’s no There there.

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

For a spot of sex  minus the math

(you must be 56 or older)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TWpcZGE_q4

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

~

Appendix.

Nevertheless, not wishing to disappoint our massive international fanbase, we do here offer, for the benefit of the worldwide erotomathematical community,  the following sexological Addition Tables (let us dub them “Justice’s Calculations”):

Augend plus Addend            Result

man + woman                        Holy Matrimony

man + man                             (does not compute)

[Update three minutes later]
Omigosh, this just in:  someone got here by searching on

   porno chemestri

Nothing to see here, folks!  Keep moving!

[Update a little later]
Alright -- okay -- somebody's messing with me.  First
  

    cultiver pornosu 
and now

      pinguinus porno

 by someone logging from Rumania.

KEITH IS THAT YOU?!?
KNOCK IT OFF !!!!!

[Update to the update:  Our learned friend proved entirely innocent of this escapade;  the real culprit has never been found.]

~

As mentioned,  no question of sex sheds any light whatever   upon the transcendent and human-independent content of mathematics, any more than do questions of economics or zoology.   But the practice of mathematics, like anything else (stamp-collecting or what have you) may be glanced at in the context of that multivariate, multifoliate syncrescence known as sexuality.  Here the great English sexologist Havelock Ellis, raised in the Victorian era  and writing in the Edwardian, reports on the results of many an attempt to curb randiness:

Mental exercise … has sometimes been advocated as a method of calming sexual excitement. … Mathematical occupations … have been advocated … as aide to sexual hygiene.

“I have tried mechanical mental work,” a lady writes, “such as solving arithmetical or algebraic problems, but it does no good;  in fact  it seems only to increase the excitement.”

-- Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex (?1897-?1910), vol. IV, p. 208

(Rather an arresting image, that:  our scholarly maiden diligently working through problems in Noetherian rings, and becoming increasingly tumescent ...)

Let us note, though, that only “mechanical” exercises are here shown to fail: arithmetic, not in the sense of Number Theory, but of long division; algebra, not in the sense of Galois or of André Weil, but of those unpleasant little sentences with x’s in them, relating to draining bathtubs which (against all reason) are simultaneously being replenished from the tap.  These can only cause the mind to wander -- Reason to abandon her throne -- as the Old Adam or the Ancient Eve  reclaim their birthright, and attention descends  beneath the waistband.