Congruence vs Chirality: calling Joe Arnold...
kirby urner
Yo Joe!
If you're out there, just wanted to say your meditation on Chirality (goes way back) has been influential in my thinking:
Recent posting to a shared faculty lounge on Telegram:
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I think one of the front lines in curriculum writing is w/r to “congruence”, so dwelt upon in early trig when we wanna prove two triangles congruent or not (SAS, SSS…)… at the expense of a related concept, likewise important: “chirality”. The “congruentist” gets uncomfortable when you mention Tetris, where no allowed rotation will turn a left L into a right L. But they’re still congruent because you can “mirror” meaning flip the L through a whole different dimension, except they’ll say reflection doesn’t require a next dimension… lots of deep philosophy for little kids.
However as any chemist or drug patent maker knows, isomers may have vastly different properties, thalidomide being an historical example, its chiral flip being an effective heart medicine or something. The congruentists are too casual about this “mirroring” of theirs, is what I’m thinking.
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PS: Thx to Don Wardwell for inviting me to a last meetup of Dead Mathematicians Society this term, at MHCC. I was able to pose as his chauffeur and flash my 3-ring binder around, offering to talk about a certain dead mathematician (next term).
