The Gap

A walk and sculpture for William Kingdon Clifford

Phil Smith, Matthew Watkins and Tony Weaver

(The Gap was performed by Matthew Watkins and Phil Smith at

the British Association’s Festival of Science in Exeter in 2004.
There is another account of the performance here.

This stitched together text is the raw material that became

smoothed and narrative-
like only once it had
begun to slide along the
planes of car parks and
slither down helical car
park ramps. The sculpture
created by Tony Weaver
had been intended for the
street outside the house of
Clifford’s childhood in
Longbrook Street, Exeter,
but after fruitless attempts
to gain planning
permission, despite site
visits, two applications
and more than 100 emails,
the sculpture was installed
at the reception to the
School of Physics at the
University of Exeter in
January 2009.)
01 – No. 82 Longbrook Street

(We arrive, ignore the amassed audience, and simulate

our discussion on the Z World dérive – all this on the
pavement outside 82 Longbrook Street)

Matthew: (basic facts of Clifford’s life - born Starcross mid.

19th Century, lived here until he was 15, got chucked out
of Cambridge for being an atheist, pre-empting of Einstein,
eccentricity, Clifford algebras ).
Phil: (breaks out of this, direct to audience of walkers) That’s
pretty much what happened here (?) months ago at the end of a
day long exploratory walk – the third of three Z Worlds Walks,
in fact. “Worlds” because they were walks to find little enclosed
self-sufficient worlds, microcosms from which one might learn
something about other places, maybe about every place. “Z”
because on the first walk we caught the early morning Z bus, the
first bus of the day, from the High Street as our catapult into
exploring. My name is Phil Smith…

Matthew: … and I’m Matthew Watkins… (two people who

live in the same street and discovered, quite by accident, a
common interest in a particular type of exploring cities:
called psychogeography or mythogeography)

Phil: Come up a little closer to the house.

(The group moves up to the top of the small car park.)

Phil: That day in 2003 Matthew and me had found plenty of Z

worlds: a cool smooth crematorium lawn, derelict MOD land
where rusting Z worlds were piled high in rusty warehouses, a
patch of lichen on a wall of volcanic rock, a wilderness of rushes
near Topsham, a tunnel of briars… this stop outside this initially
rather unimpressive house – it was dark and I hadn’t really
noticed the gothic tower yet… it didn’t really mean that much to
me compared to all the wonderful worlds of shapes and textures
we’d discovered earlier, but then, the next day, Matthew emailed
me...
 Matthew: the corkscrew dream,
PhD, Chisholms, etc. (Photos of
Clifford?)

“A few nights ago, I dreamed I

was walking through a city with
my friend Amanda…We
encountered a busload of kids,
and one kid ran up to a lamppost,
sort of jumped sideways in the air,
grabbed the post, and spiralled
downwards, his body remaining horizontal. When I
woke up I remembered having read years ago in a
little biographical piece on Clifford that he was an
athletic child who invented a thing he called a
‘corkscrew’ (the thing the kid in the dream did). So
Clifford as a child appeared in my dream, not the
bearded professor - he lived in Longbrook Street as a
child, and it was presumably in Exeter that he
practised his ‘corkscrews’)."

Phil: I was interested now. The dream seemed to place Clifford

here and it changed the nature of this space – who was this child,
rotating around lampposts, did he used to stare out of that gothic
tower? What did he see and did it affect what he would do? Was
he already thinking about the world? I knew almost nothing
about him, and yet already he seemed a self-sufficient world in
himself, this man who speculated that the universe was made of
curved space, who’d made curved leaps around lampposts.
I went to the Central Library and I
found a copy of his book The
Common Sense Of The Exact
Sciences, it was in the pre-50
Stack… (Take copy of the book from
my rucksack.) I didn’t understand
much to start with, I still don’t… but,
I kept going because the book starts
with shapes and spaces that I could
recognise and the author writes as if
he longs for everyone, even me, to
understand.

On this
walk, I
really ought
to be
playing the
role of the
scatty,
scantily clad
assistant and
Matthew
should be
Doctor
Who, me
asking the questions so the good Doctor can supply the answers
that the plot requires, but … while Matthew is sometimes called
“the Doctor” by his friends, I also used to be called “the Doc”
but only by one person (Misha Glenny)… so I’m going to have a
problem staying in character.
What might keep me in there is that I know that Matthew has a
way into Clifford’s algebraic world, and I don’t… I believe it’s
there in some way, I can very, very hazily describe its most basic
qualities, but I can’t really ‘see’ in its language… and yet I have
this sense that if I could learn more of that world, it will tell me
things about other worlds, maybe all other worlds…

So this walk today… is about gaps – between what I know and

what I might know, between this world (touches the ground) and
Clifford’s algebra, between Matthew and me, and gaps between
one thing and another that maybe open up everything.

Matthew: To help us begin our journey, we’re going to go

somewhere where we can begin to see Clifford’s
mathematics and geometry take shape - a two
dimensional space he might have been rather surprised
by.

(Matthew leads us towards the road. At the roadside.)

Phil: We may be talking about matter in 4 and sometimes more

dimensions, but that won’t affect just how much it will hurt if
you get run over, so be very careful crossing the roads, stick
together and let’s try and cross as a group.

[82 - carpark] Matthew: points out π (pi) among

the graffiti)

02 - just inside Howell Road car park

between Longbrook Street and Exeter
Central Station
Matthew: I begin by forewarning you that we're not going
to launch straight into Clifford's original ideas - too deep.
We'll have to build up to it by working our way through
some of the ideas that preceded Clifford. Some of it is
fairly basic stuff, some of it he would have probably been
thinking during his teenage years here. We're going to get
into his own stuff later, but now I shall attempt to guide you
through some ideas inspired by the style of presentation
which appears in Clifford's popular science classic
Common Sense Of the Exact Sciences – using this car
park!

Phil: Clifford might have been surprised to find the car park
here. But the prison would have been familiar to him. Maybe he
even saw executions there. (Showing the audience the slip in the
book.) The last person before me to borrow The Common Sense
from the library was a prisoner.
(Phil hands the book to Matthew)

Matthew: the railway line/maybe saw the first steam train

to arrive

(Matthew begins to chalk a straight line perpendicular to a

wall of the car park and another, similarly scaled, line
parallel to the first.)

Phil: And then, of course, up there, the courts would have been
familiar to him as the place where his father, a JP, would sit,
interpreting the laws of the judicial system, within the walls of
the old castle. Was he thinking of that space… when he wrote
his nonsense piece, ‘The Giant’s Shoes’ for a collection of Fairy
Tales called The Little People?

(Maybe read this from the book of Clifford’s Essays from the
Institution.)

“Once upon a time there was a large giant who lived in a

small castle… From his earliest youth up, his legs had been
of a surreptitiously small size, unsuited to the rest of his
body; so he sat upon the south-west wall of the castle with
his legs inside…

(Phil sits on the car park to demonstrate, is there a square to do it

in?)

… and his right foot came out of the east gate, and his left
foot out of the north gate, while his gloomy but spacious
 coat-tails covered up the south and the west gates; and in
this way the castle was defended against all comers…”

Unfortunately, the giant came to this arrangement prior to

putting his shoes on – something, subsequently, he was unable to
do for lack of space.

“In one of (the shoes) his wife lived when she was at home;
on other occasions she lived in the other shoe. She was a
sensible, practical kind of woman, with two wooden legs
and a clothes-horse, but in other respects not rich. The
wooden legs were kept pointed at the ends, in order that if
the giant were dissatisfied with his breakfast he might pick
up any stray people that were within reach, using his wife
as a fork.”

Even in a fairy tale his giant is a set of orthogonal axes, his legs
and back at right angles. But it’s not an arid game of geometrical
references – the story of The Giant’s Shoes is alive with the
promise of shapes that transform themselves, it being in their
very nature to change – a wife into a fork, a church steeple into a
dagger, a meal of hay into a good thatch of hair.

Matthew:

(material to cover:
• positive whole numbers as steps
• numbers generally as steps (or vectors)
• negative numbers as backward steps
• addition and subtraction in terms of steps
• commutativity of addition
 • the number line
• orientation of number line
• multiplication as geometric operation on number line
• commutativity of multiplication on line
• number line as “1-dim space with algebraic structure”
• the implications of stepping off the line)

Mention that Clifford was a 'space man', used space to

explain number, typically. His chapter on number pretty
much starts with steps

(Matthew passes the Common Sense book to Phil)

The sequence of ideas to be explained is then:

number as quantity, as quantity of anything, as quantity of

steps, this allowing us to associate numbers with locations
along a line. Number as an 'instruction' - we'll call that a
vector. Adding demonstrated with steps. Commutativity of
addition. What about subtraction? Hitting brick wall, move
to other line, discover negative integers. Negative
numbers as instructions, as vectors. Multiplying as an
instruction, a magnification rather than a shift. "Multiplying
by 3 as a stretching of the line where 0 stays put, 1 -> 3, -1
-> -3, etc.". We now have a 'number line', or a '1-
dimensional space' with a simple algebraic structure,
which very simply means we have rules for adding and
multiplying. So the usual system of numbers with + and x
(if we include negative numbers) is thought of by
mathematicians as "a 1-dimensional space with an
'algebraic structure'." Clifford would have described it, as
we just did, using geometric analogies. His main
contribution to mathematics, Clifford Algebras, are
sometimes called "geometric algebras", and reflect
something of his deep understanding of the nature of
space, what it is and how it works.

Something about orientation.

JSRC - Hamilton had already talked about vectors before

Clifford.

Phil: I’m still with this. Perhaps because I can relate this to my
walking. Taking one step after another. And yet – apart from
those times when one might deliberately attempt to walk a
straight line in order to find what obstacles might lie across its
path - most of the time I’m stepping off the line, always trying to
sidle and crab away from the straight and narrow… (Phil steps
off the line.) … so, geometrically, where am I now?

Matthew: OK - so we're off the line. It's not really a LINE in

the strict geometric sense (being physically impossible),
but it's suggestive of a line. Similarly, the car park is
suggestive of a plane, though far from a pure geometric
plane. But we'll step off the line into a plane.

Stepping off the line is meaningless if we’re still thinking of

numbers as passive quantities, but if we think of them as
active ‘instructions’ (Clifford’s directed steps) then there’s a
natural extension.

03 - deeper inside the Howell Road car park

(material to cover:
• points in plane as vectors, so, rather like negative
numbers – a new kind of number
• the existence of complex numbers before WKC
• adding vectors in a plane
• commutativity of vector addition
• multiplying vectors in a plane (why and how)
• commutativity of complex multiplication
• plane as 2-d number plane or 2-d space with
algebraic structure
• 2-d-ness of a plane, axes
• orientation in 2-d
• 3-d spaces and extension of vector addition into 3-d,
axes and hint of orientation)

(We walk further into the car park, near to the far
lamppost, in view of Debenhams.

Matthew gets set up somehow - Phil tells helicopter/kite/

sheep anecdote.

Phil: When we came into the car park one evening to work some
of this out, the police helicopter got interested in us and hovered
over us for a few minutes – Clifford would have been very
interested by that – he made a number of preliminary
experiments with the intention of designing a flying machine –
using very large kites and very long pieces of string – which had
to be laboriously laid out in a straight line before take off…

(Phil draws a long line with a piece of chalk)

…the experiments came to an end, when after laying out the
string Clifford and his helpers went off to lunch and a flock of
sheep, including its shepherd, got entangled in the string…

(Phil draws a huge tangle knot in the string.)

… and that seems to have been the end of that.

Matthew: Now, by the 18th century, mathematicians were

already starting to deal with a 2-dimensional number
system or a "plane" of numbers. Stepping off the line into
a plane, what is that number? Bit like negative numbers.
You can extend them in a meaningful way. We're going to
see how a 2-d number system works.

Sequence: Extending the idea of vectors to correspond to

points in plane. Vector addition. Acting out vector addition
in 2-d. The commutativity of vector addition.

Now if we're going to try to deal with geometrical issues,

like "area", we need to be able to multiply. So what about
multiplying. If we're going to talk about a 2-d number
system with an algebraic structure, we need to be able to
multiply any two points (vectors in plane).
Use lengths of knotted string and 3 volunteers.
Predetermined lengths, they can choose angle, use
compass to determine where they are, mentally add
angles, etc. Get a third person. There's an element of
magnification and an element of rotation.
Note that it's commutative.
Multiplying in this way might seem arbitrary, but there's a
very deep and beautiful branch of maths called complex
analysis (used by physicists to describe the deep structure
of the world). Notice how the complex numbers include
the usual numbers (multiplication stays the same on
horizontal axis). Point out the number i, the most famous
complex number, which multiplies our volunteer in a
particular way. i x i = -1

This system of complex numbers already well-established

by the time WC started learning maths. He explained it in
CSOE. Keep reminding them that this is a modern version
of Clifford explaining the ideas that led up to his ideas.

"Don't panic" -> just as we can interpret points in 1-d as

numbers, adding and multiplying them, we can interpret
points in 2-d as "numbers", adding and multiplying them.

Explain why the car park is "2-dimensional". Two numbers

needed - either (horizontal, vertical) or (distance, angle).
You could get into left, right orientation (whether we
measure angles clockwise or anticlockwise.

Car park as 2-d also means only 2 lines at right

angles...Put umbrella upright to illustrate where the 3rd
would have to go.

Phil: Like where the ceiling and walls meet in the corner of a
room. Or the giant’s legs and backbone…
(Phil sits on the car park, legs apart, to illustrate)

Matthew: Or…. Pointing out

Debenhams. What 3-d space is. 3
lines at right angles. Points described
with 3 numbers. The fact you can
extend vector addition to 3d (imagine
flying instructions, or lifting our arrows
off the carpark and waving them about
in the air.

Phil: I look up at that building, and I hear

Matthew talking – and part of me feels
comfortable, because I know that the basement of Debenhams
was created to serve as a hospital in the event of nuclear war and
so it has a meaning for me, but also I feel like I’m on the edge up
there… on the edge of the gap where standing doesn’t quite meet
falling – inside a geometrical version of my vertigo: my
attraction to I don’t know what, maybe to what I fear, a
compelling suspicion that there’s something concealed,
incomprehensible and sinister… and yet reading the The
Common Sense, listening to Matthew here in the car park I’m
beginning to see places and spaces through a ghostly grid, to
vectors… get a sense of buildings in motion, geometrically
alive… but I know that coming up is stuff that’s going to scare
and bewilder me … a gap is going to open up between what this
universe is, and what my mind can do... and I’m going to fall,
geometrically, off Debenhams. Come on!

03 (a) On the way to Bishop’s Move – junction of

Howell Road and Longbrook Terrace?

Matthew: It’s appropriate that we’re here on Howell

Road…. Howell being King Howell, King of the Celts…
because we’ve only one more mathematical step to go
before we’re ready to consider Clifford’s work and that step
was made by a Celt… the Irish mathematician…
Hamilton…

Mention the basics about Hamilton's quaternions (1843 – 2

years before birth of William Kingdon Clifford in Starcross)
- how we're just now a short walk from Clifford's ideas.
Hamilton and his quaternions – Probably most significant
Irish contribution to mathematics, and first example of an
algebra that wasn’t commutative. I'm sure Robert Anton
Wilson wrote something about how only an Irishman could
have come up with this.
This is actually praising the
Irish for their ability to think
laterally. Perhaps it's a
certain Celtic mindset. You
could mention that the Celts
primary contribution to
maths was geometric -
involved those wonderful
bits of knotwork - and we'll
come back to that.

We now walk along narrow

pavement and cross a road.

04 - Bishops Move

material to cover:
• ecological perspective
• 2-d spaces in 3-d, rotation, etc
• First hint of ‘bivectors’
• Clifford algebras in computer algorithms (make clear
we haven’t described C. algebras yet)
• Reminder about vector addition
• Orientation in 2-d space
• Anti-commutativity
Matthew: Side wall of building has a perspective
chessboard. This is an example of projective geometry.
It's a 2 dimensional grid hanging in 3-d space viewed from
an oblique angle, rendered as a 2-dimensional image
made of quadrilaterals. This shows how 3-dimensions can
be represented by a trick in 2-d. Projective geometry
involved. The mind seems to instinctively grasp this - it's
like it's wired in. It is able to "fill in the gaps" in your
perception. These days a graphics designer making a
logo like this might use a sophisticated bit of software
which would use mathematics to calculate how a grid
would look in perspective at a selected angle. This is
exactly the sort of thing Clifford algebras would deal with
very beautifully and with maximal efficiency. Although
most mathematicians are barely familiar with Clifford
algebras, and in the 1970's only a tiny handful, now people
involved in robotics, optical imaging, space vehicle design
are using Clifford Algebras. This has all happened since
JSRC'86.

Do I want to do my "game" quote here or further along just

before we do the game?

This isn't a quote from Clifford, but it's from Newman's

introduction to CSOE, so we could quote it without
necessarily deceiving anyone and claiming it to be WKC
outright.

"Geometry considered as a pure science of ideal

space is an exercise in logic comparable to a game
played with formal rules. As in any game, there are
pieces or counters (elements: lines, points, etc.), their
 properties fixed by definition (postulates), their
operations prescribed by rules (logical inference).
There is no point in asking what the game means; it is
essential only that it be consistent and played
according to the rules. If the game points some moral
or there is discernible in its patterns some similarity to
the patterns of physics, politic, or psychoanalysis, the
coincidence is interesting, but not necessarily
important. The pure logic of games has little to do
with the erratic wanderings of nature."

He believed geometry in the physical world was an

experimental science, rather than the pure science of the
abstract geometry (a consistent game)

csoe xxi (Newman). "Geometry considered as applied

mathematics is quite another case. The postulates
and elements based upon experience purport to
describe the space around us and the extensional
properties of matter. Pure geometry can no more be
wrong than the game of dominoes; like dominoes,
also, it cannot be right. Geometry as applied
mathematics on the other hand, can be right or wrong
in describing measurable relations."

I get a real chessboard out with some stickers on it,

demonstrate orientation and anticommutativity at the same
time. Get the mirror out, etc.

The choice here: do we mention bivectors? I can't see any

good reason to. They've just seen vectors in a plane
multiplied to produce a vector, and Hamilton's quaternions
are sort of the same. This could all be very
confusing...May have to hide behind a smokescreen of
artistic vagueness. You're going to go on to tell them it's a
bivector or trivector?? Some people notice these things!

Lines in space had long been described in terms of the

vectors pointing along them, but Clifford's innovation was
to come up with a system where you could multiply two
vectors to get a "bivector", which describes a plane with an
orientation - Perhaps produce a chequered board you can
use to describe how clockwise on one side is anticlockwise
on the other, and that there are two ways you can orient a
plane.

e1e2 = -e2e1

Also a BISHOPS MOVE on the board could be thought of

as a sum of horizontal and vertical vectors. e1 + e2 or e1 -
e2

The idea of "oriented space". A geometric figure can have

a "negative area" in Clifford's description of space. This
turns out to be a very useful and elucidating concept once
you get the hang of it.

[This is probably a bit wacky, but we could just stretch the

psychogeography, point out that we are on the road to
Crediton, and the Bishop of Crediton (where the Cathedral
was) MOVED to Exeter along this axis. Perhaps prefigure
any mention of religion by pointing out how powerful the
bishop of Exeter would have still been in the 1850's (I
assume he was), and how there would have been a major
religious component to WC's life in Exeter. Perhaps find
out who was the Bishop was in the 1850's and an
anecdote? He seems to be the one who 'moved' when the
cholera hit – Bishop Philpotts.] –

Matthew, if we’ve time it’s good if you can finish with this
anecdote – as you, the mathematician conjure up a bit of
psychogeography, just before I, the artist (!), encourage
everyone to see place in terms of shapes and framing
…(Phil)

Produce a chessboard, and remind people that the Bishop

moves diagonally, the sum of horizontal and vertical
vectors which the rook ('Castle') moves along. Sums of
vectors versus products of vectors

Phil: When I first heard Matthew mention this thing about our
minds filling in the gaps geometrically, I remembered how since
Matthew had first mentioned the name William Clifford to me,
outside no 82 down there, I’d started to come across his name in
different places: and one of those places was in the bibliography
of The Perception Of The Visual World by James J. Gibson –
his Common Sense of the Exact Sciences is in there – because
just as Clifford builds up his geometrical science from simple
steps, lines and shapes, so Gibson builds up his theories of
perception from the ecology of the world around us… from the
array of light that creates complex matrices as it reflects from the
surfaces around us.. and the very nature of those surfaces… from
the grander vistas.. like these walls going up Poltimore Square
towards the car park… to the texture and pigment of the
bricks… and the process of perception itself is not unconnected
with these vistas and textures and pigments – perception can fill
in the gaps because that perception has been formed in response
to exactly these combinations of light arrays and vistas and
textures and pigments … like Clifford, Gibson sees perception as
based on difference… Clifford writes: “consciousness begins
with difference” (??) … Gibson that there is no memory bank
against which we compare what we see now with previous
experiences, but rather what we experience are the transitions
from one moment’s perception to the next and those differences
are what tell us what we see… meaning is in difference itself…

also, like Clifford, Gibson is a great one for refusing to take

anything for granted… he’s a fellow peeler-away of assumptions
–

As I’m talking to you I’m looking up Longbrook Street to where

the old Theatre Royal once stood, and I’m thinking of Clifford
addressing an audience in a theatre… and as he does he
describes how he sees the inside of the theatre and how he sees
the members of the audience… him there, them there – there’s a
sort of rotational quality to theatre, isn’t there? – a plus and a
minus, that’s easily reversed – Clifford talked about how when
he looked at the faces of the audience raised towards him, he had
a sense of the backs of their heads – even though he could see
nothing of them… but not as if he could see around the back of
their heads… but rather as if he could see the backs of their
heads from the inside…

(doing corkscrew motion with hand)

…our way of looking may not be as straightforward as we

think… at least not William Clifford’s… imagining the
rotational quality of a head, but from the inside… he corkscrews
inside their skulls!

(again, doing the corkscrew motion with hand)

When you arrived at 82 Longbrook Street this afternoon/evening

you probably saw the place like I did – as part of a boundless
space, its walls running down into foundations, reaching up
towards the sky, when you turned your back on it you felt it was
still there, when you looked at it… taking account of you
wearing the right glasses if you need them … it all looked in
focus, part of the same world as the trees and the road and the
houses opposite… yes?

But if I’d asked you, down there, to fixate on one detail, you
might have seen it differently… look at this spot on the Bishop’s
Move sign… now, keeping you focus on that spot, move your
head slightly… Gibson based all his work on seeing the world as
we’re in motion… which is what we are almost all the time…
now if you move your head you should see some differences
(stay focussed on the spot!)… you should see that your sight is
not boundless, but it is framed by the side of your nose, your
eyebrows and maybe your fringe of hair, you may notice that
though the centre of your vision is in focus towards the edges it
blurs - and if you move your head again - you’ll see that the part
of the vista leaving your sight tends to bend as it leaves and the
part coming into sight is bent and straightens up as it enters the
centre of your vision…

This is what J. J. Gibson calls seeing the “visual field” as

opposed to how you perceived 82 Longbrook Street when you
arrived, which he would call the “visual world” –
The more I learn about Clifford, indeed about algebra and
geometry in general – despite all my trouble in trying to grasp
them - the more natural they seem and the more geometrical and
algebraic nature seems… and I begin to see – more and more of
the time - things as a series of “fields”…

05 – Stairwell window

Matthew: point out Debenhams again and hand out cubes

and pencils and instructions

(Phil sneaks up inside the stairwell putting on his Matthew

mask. He then draws a right hand pair of axes labelled "i,j"
imitating me doing it on the back of my chessboard. Also a
300o circular arc with arrow. Once people have done their
cubes I draw attention to this fact. That clockwise is just
anticlockwise from the other side. Same as a mirror
image.)

Key idea to paste in somewhere else. You can stand on

either side of a 1-d space (line) and reverse the
orientation. You can stand on either side of a 2-d space
(window) and reverse the orientation, but a 3-d space,
there’s no obvious sense of there being ”another side” –
yet one can meaningfully discuss reversal of orientation.
Keep orientation and dimensionality as your key themes.

06 – under the footbridge.

Matthew gets everyone to return their pencils, point their
"i"'s upward and see how the group splits. [note that now
Queens Crescent is 'out', there is no need to split the
group - unless we can find somewhere to do it on way
back to 82 ] Talk about the duality again - this is
something trans-dimensional: left-right in 1-d,
clockwise/anti-clockwise in 2-d, left and right handed
helicities in 3-d. Use your stickers (or a pair of gloves?) on
Phil's fingers to illustrate left and right-handed orientations
in 2 and 3-d

Remind people about Hamilton as you head to spot under

bridge, how he came up with his quaternions. chalk it up
under the bridge:

Explain that this is their i,j,k. That the i we saw in the car
park i x i = -1. Same kind of thing, but Hamilton came up
with a system involving three of these things.

carved under the Brougham bridge in Dublin which he was

walking along Royal Canal to meeting of the Irish
Academy! .

i x i = j x j = k x k = i x j x k = -1

i x j = k, j x k = i, k x i = j
j x i = -k, k x j = -i, i x k = -j

so i x j = -j x i, etc.

(draw up the cycle i -> j -> k -> )

In 1 dimension we have one "unit" - the number 1
In 2 dimensions we have two units. These are often
considered 1 and i.

Hamilton's quaternions are

effectively 3 units for 3-d
space. You may ask why
quaternions, and it's cos he
was thinking 1,i,j,k. But the 1
plays a different kind of role as
WC elucidated.

So in 3 dimensions we have
these 3 units i,j,k. They 'span'
the space, and we can multiply
them like a game. (we could
actually pull out some i,j,k
stones, multiply them
according to the rule). Then explain that Clifford
generalised this - chalk up some equations with e1,e2,
etc....explain this wasn't his notation, but the one
commonly used now. Explain how these would be the
edges of Debenhams, the room and walls would
correspond to bivectors, but these could be negative or
positive depending on "which way round you were
considering them".
 Phil and Matthew get their
bags out and play the C0,3
(quaternionic) Clifford
algebra game with a +/-
flat stone we can flip.
Either of us can multiply in
stones. Get across the
idea that you can't get
higher than e1e2e3.
Explain that even tho' it's a
silly game, the essence is
used in robotic and space
vehicle design. Phil should
point out i,j,k is the same
as e1, e2, e3. Relate the
vectors to the cube edges
(3 possible, 2 directions),
the bivectors to the cube
faces (there are 3 possible,
with two possible directions).The trivector - only one
possible. Represents the cube.

Need to get across that there are other vectors than e1,
e2, e3 - this is just a representative set in terms of which
all the others can be represented. They're called a basis?
By stretching and adding these 3 vectors we can produce
any vector. Just like 1 and i in the plane. You can add
and multiply any vectors, not just the basis vectors. And
we get all sorts of other bivectors and trivectors than the
basic ones that will show up in the game. But every
bivector can be expressed in terms of these basis
bivectors, every trivector...
Clifford algebras somehow manage to deal with 1, 2, 3,
and higher dimensional objects all at the same time. In the
sort of adding-apples-to-pears kind of way.

There's also a special kind of inbuilt duality which

distinguishes Clifford algebras from other algebras. You
need to get that across with your mirrors, window tricks,
etc.

Once people get the idea of the rules, they will get the idea
that we can produce a new e4 and just accord it the same
rules. Your e1,e2,e3 were like quaternions, with negative
signature, so they 'flip annihilate'. The e4 will just
annihilate. It's the time dimension. But it could have been
the other way. We have to specify our algebra, there are
options. Perhaps chalk up 1,2,3 with -,-,- under it, and
then when you add the 4 you put a + under it.

Phil: I’m a bit shocked about this, you know. I’d imagined that
if I ever found myself working in 4 dimensions… then the
screen would go all wavy, or I’d fragment into little pixels and
shoot off into space or be transported back into medieval
Exeter… but this passing into 4 dimensions turns out to be
connected to how the real world works… rather than just the one
we see and experience… because we can’t see get around the
back of 3 dimensions… with a one dimensional line, we step off
the line… like we did in the car park… and with the two
dimensional plane of the chess board or the window we could be
on both sides of it… but how do we get outside the three
dimensions of Debenhams when we’re in the same three
dimensions as it is? And this is the answer – it’s not a
geographical answer, it’s a mathematical one… and it’s not a
trick, or a marginal bit of absurdity… it’s a key to standing
outside of massive three dimensional events… as J. J. Gibson
helps us to see the way that
two dimensional lines and
planes in three dimensions
make up our perception of
the world, so Clifford makes
the next leaps – (hold two of
the stones up to our eyes) –
and gives us mathematical
eyes to see how the three-
dimensional world operates
from the viewpoint of four
dimensions.

Matthew: explain that

we've just extended the
algebra from 2 to 3 to 4
dimensions. But the fact
that the 2-d algebra
seems to perfectly match
our sense of 2-d space, and a 3-d algebra our sense of 3-d
space, this 4-d algebra makes you think "Maybe there's
some kind of 4-dim space in some sense which this
algebra similarly describes." It exists in the minds, the
collective imagination of mathematicians, at the very least.

JRSR says (p.160) "It is always hard to explain why some

discoveries are not immediately appreciated by the
scientific word. One reason for the neglect of CA was that
the idea of 'higher-dimensional spaces' was not
fashionable in the nineteenth century. Indeed, some
contemporaries of Clifford argued strongly that we live in a
3-dim world, and that it was meaningless to talk of spaces
of four, five, and higher dimensions."

But once we go above 3, it's hard to visualise (there are

some limited tricks in 3-d whereby you can model 4-d
goings on) - refer back to Bishops Move image

Refer back to the BM chessboard - just as you can have a

2-dim plane at a certain 'slant in 3-space', this would be a
particular bivector, once we could agree on an orientation.
Similarly once you're in 4-d, you can have a 3-dim space
embedded therein at a particular 'slant' - it would be
represented with a trivector - almost impossible to imagine
this.

IMPORTANT TO STRESS: All scientists now familiar with

vectors, but only the small number of Clifford-minded ones
know about bivectors and trivectors.

Weirdness of 4-dimensions...

Can get into Einstein's special relativity - 4 dimensional

spacetime continuum. Clifford C1,3 is ideal.

Important to mention that the same Clifford Algebra turns

out to describe both space-time and the fundamental
particles of nature. Explain how this idea was largely
ignored right up through the 60's and the publication of
Hestenes’ book in '66, but now becoming fashionable.
line segments, squares, cubes, hypercubes - the sorts of
things you could deal with very easily in Clifford algebras -
describing 4-dimensional geometric objects and
calculating hypervolumes, etc. Consider circle (1-d in 2-d),
sphere (2-d in 3-d)

Back to the corkscrew.

Phil describes leap from 2 dim to 3 dim motion. –

(Matthew, I’m not sure where this comes from?)

(Phil: motion is important here – Gibson studied the world

through senses in motion… would it be right to say that
Clifford’s cosmos is not one that has a state of rest? )

Matthew: I mention Clifford's leap from 3 to 4 dimensions

was something of a 'mental corkscrew', and 'helicity' is a
recurrent theme in his work...perhaps show them
Penrose's diagram as an example of 'Clifford parallels' on
a 'hypersphere' in 4-dimensions...

07 – The helix.

Go inside. Point out we have a helix. Point out that the

helix immediately suggests an orientation. Pull out mirror
to evoke the opposite orientation.

Clifford was particularly keen on helices. If there's one

iconic image it would be this.

(Maybe Phil could be up on the road part of the helix

bringing something down? The following is explained as
Phil is instructed by Matthew to walk up and down the
helical ramp to illustrate the ideas.)

His motion around the lamppost would be most accurately

described in terms of Clifford algebras as particularly
relevant for spins, twists, rotations Clifford generalised
vectors, came up with 'rotors' and writes in CSOE about
'twist', using corkscrew to illustrate a point about an axis
rotating, combined with a linear motion - used in describing
rotating bodies generally.

Dirac's equation for relativistic electron - 1928 - now would

be described involving 'spinors', which have come out of
Clifford's thinking. It's all about the spin of the electron.
From the 30's to the 80's this was described in terms of
'Pauli spin matrices'...possibly do soup plate trick to
illustrate how a spin1/2 particle can work. Powers of -1.
Parity. Fermions and bosons. Supersymmetry.

JSRC: In 1928, Paul Dirac published his revolutionary

theory of the electron, a theory which rapidly became a
cornerstone of all modern theoretical physics. To describe
the electron mathematically, Dirac invented a
mathematical structure known as 'Dirac algebra'. He did
not realise that this algebra was very closely related to
Clifford's algebra describing four dimensional space,
discovered half a century earlier. It was another 25 years
before physicists began to appreciate that hte algebra
Dirac had invented was just a particular one of a whole
range of Clifford algebras.
The coincidence of the close relationship between
Clifford's and Dirac's algebras is important. Remember
that each CA corresponds to its own 'space'. Dirac's
algebra is precisely the CA associated with the space-time
of Einstein's Special...Relativity...So out of a myriad of
possible mathematical structures, the same Clifford
algebra turns out to describe both space-time and the
fundamental particles of nature."

Penrose's more recent work on 'twistors' takes the whole

thing further. WKC would certainly have recognised this
fundamental role of spin, twist, spatial orientation in
these descriptions of the fundamental structure of the
Universe. Show them a blow-up of Penrose's twistor
picture and tell them a bit about where it came from.
Clifford's approach as unifying.

He sketched out some ideas in his later lectures about

how linear motions and rotations (seemingly very different
things) could be unified into a single framework involving
the combination of helical motions.
Coils of wire. Electrical (vector) and magnetic (bivector)
fields. Spatial orientation directly relevant to the +/- polarity
in electrical theory. Dynamos and generators. Reverse the
+/- wires to an electric motor and it spins the opposite way.
Hestenes (should have just mentioned him) showing how
electromagnetism could be unified in a CA framework.
Gyroscope and mirror. Gyroscope, or any spinning wheel
has angular momentum. This is a combination of how fast
it's spinning (really how much 'momentum' it has) and it
also involves a sense of the plane in which it is spinning.
Traditionally this would have been described with a vector.
The length relating to the momentum, and the direction
being at a right angle to the plane of spin. Hestenes has
shown how a Clifford bivector is much more ideal (already
describes a plane, has a 'magnitude' AND and orientation -
show gyroscope in mirror). Pull out Hestenes printout and
show the Omega.

Clifford all about unifying (quote Hestenes) - unifying

language of the sciences, organic unity of the sciences
(embracing the whole 'human world')

Perhaps you could reassure people about the emergence

of all this terminology
vector, rotor, motor, spinor, twistor, tensor (there are
probably others) rather like, electron, proton, neutron,
boson, fermion, muon, pion, gluon, tachyon, etc...
Something that does something rather than is something.

Perhaps mention that Left Hand, Right Hand book

(perhaps try to GET it, see if Clifford is mentioned.

08 - Curved lawn

Phil: Before us is the re-built church of St Sidwells, William’s

local parish church – a traditionally High Church, Anglo-
Catholic place of worship and the scene shortly after his birth of
the Surplice Riots in which thousands came out onto the streets
to protest against the priest here wearing a ritualistic white
vestment – a general passionate engagement with religion that
began to fade away during William’s life – but even so, the
stories of those events along with his early High Church faith
may partly account for his sense of the importance of the
symbolical.

Behind us here we’ve got the Hair Emporium with its ironically
used nineteenth century name: if Clifford were here now the
fashionable braiding of hair might remind him of his ideas about
the nature of matter. For the common idea of matter when he
was alive was that there was some kind of background medium –
called aether - in which all matter ‘swam’ – this didn’t satisfy
Clifford at all:

"… whatever may turn out to be the ultimate nature of the

ether and of molecules…” he wrote “…we know that to
some extent at least they obey the same dynamic laws, and
that they act upon one another in accordance with these
laws. Until, therefore, it is absolutely disproved, it must
remain the simplest and most probable assumption that they
are finally made of the same stuff - that the material
molecule is some kind of knot or coagulation of ether."

Of course, the idea of an aether was abandoned after the

Mitchelson experiments to measure it found that there wasn’t
anything there to measure, but the idea of knots in matter
continues today with the use by quantum physicists of braided
algebras – whose ‘commutation relations’ are related to the
geometric structure of certain kinds of braiding– incidentally
resurrecting the work of various knot enthusiasts of the 19th
century!

(Draw quick diagram on the ground in chalk – Matthew to

do this)
Phil: Maybe when he was thinking about molecules he
remembered those sheep and shepherd tangled in his kite string.
Or the hay that grew into a thatch of hair in The Giant’s Shoes.
Wherever Clifford got the idea from, knot theory takes us back
to that celtic artwork – an expression, perhaps of something
more fundamental than decoration…now, such speculation is not
entirely inappropriate here, on such an august event supported by
the British Association… Clifford was never afraid to speculate
beyond the boundaries of what he could know, but when he did,
he speculated according to principles he could observe
elsewhere… for him describing what we know is essentially a
technical procedure, scientific knowledge is being able to predict
from that technical knowledge how what we don’t know might
turn out to be.

And it is the prescience of his speculations that maybe suggests

to us that there is something in the deep structures of his thought
that is continuing to make his work relevant to researchers into
the fundamentals of matter… “solving the universe”…

Matthew: Do his remarks on the unification of space and

matter, prefigure general relativity?

Matter as curvature of empty space. We're getting more

into his speculative/philosophical stuff now, but he
questioned the usefulness of 'matter' and 'force', arguing
that it should all be unified in a uniform geometric context.
Very much precognising general relativity.

(We walk the noncommutative parallelogram thing. Phil

and Matthew should just 'act this out' without regard to
accuracy.)
Matthew: Point to an example of curved 2-d space in 3-
dimensions. Here is the gap that reveals the curvature.
Clifford was able to realise that our space might be curved
in some sense...He was aware of the emerging 'non-
Euclidean geometry' which described perfectly consistent
spaces which were utterly counterintuitive (give examples).
He was heavily involved in promoting these ideas, and
perhaps the first to suggest that our space might be
curved...that we have no evidence that it isn't. Just as the
adult Clifford would challenge and reject the supernatural
doctrines of Christianity, and all supernatural religions
indeed…

Phil: He wasn’t beyond mugging mediums during séances to

prevent them using their trick props and strings…

Matthew: … he also challenged the secular ‘faith’ in

Euclidean geometry…( From Newman CSOE intro:) Now
this enthronement was unfortunate in two respects. First,
as a description of actual space Euclidean geometry could
not pretend to universality: its postulates and theorems
having been tested only in a most limited range might not
be valid outside that range - in the domain of the very
small or of the very large –. Second, by turning
Euclidean postulates into commandments, the
freedom of mathematical inquiry was more effectively
throttled than by ecclesiastical ban. For there appeared
to be no possibility of constructing new geometries based
upon non-Euclidean postulates, such postulates being,
clearly, "contrary to nature." Any discussion of space not
known to the sense was thus forbidden.
To the second part - Clifford’s passion for upsetting the
Church meant he had no inhibitions about upsetting
Euclideans.

To the first part – he speculated that not only might space

be curved on an immense scale, but at a small scale it
might be non-continuous…

The gap…

"In WC's private papers is an unpublished note discussing

'revolutions in science' and listing a wide variety of physical
and chemical phenomena. The last sentence of this note
reads:

“All these things must come out of a knowledge of the form

of atoms and their relation to the aether. What is pointed
to is therefore a connection between kinetic and
undulatory theory.”."

This might be too much weirdness at once (It will only work
if you have you mentioned the Planck scale?), also not
that much to do with WKC himself. Noncommutativity in
itself wasn't really his thing....but you could chalk
Schrodinger's equation up on pavement and explain about
the fact that in QM normal variables of mechanics get
replaced by operations, and that PQ - QP would normally
be 0, but in fact there's a little gap. It's magnitude is h/2π,
where h is the Planck length and π is familiar, but it's also
multiplied by i.
The key here is to deal with the idea that, OK, Clifford was
able to describe space, in a new and imaginative way
which allows us to formulate large and small scale models
of the Universe, but what about his philosophical
questioning of his assumptions about space?

09 - Opposite St. Sidwells:

Matthew: The bell visible by the church. (possibly mention

- from CSOES or L&E - the bit about "bells on elastic
stalks"...Grand piano...

JSRC d175 "He was fascinated by the evidence of a

structure of molecule, which he describes as 'at least as
complicated as a grand piano' - a very apt simile ( -
vibrations – string theory…

10 – Edge of multi-storey

Phil: Now we can see the back of 82 Longbrook Street. And

from here we can get an idea of William Clifford’s view of the
world. His vistas. The church is behind him – at 15 he leaves to
study at King’s College, London and then on to Cambridge,
entering an academic world where the Church is rapidly losing
authority - influenced by the debates around the work of Darwin
and Spencer, he rejects his Christian faith, and from then on, for
him, consciousness is as finished in death as the bodies in the
morgue of the funeral parlour over there.

and this attitude seems to lasted beyond the grave…:

Matthew: (Matthew’s seance story)

He began to seek answers to the fundamental questions of
existence – what he called “solving the universe” – not in
ingenious combinations of science and theology inspired
by his reading of Aquinas, but in the shapes and lines that
he seems to have been able to see everywhere…
(referring to the geometric shapes on the car park below).

And yet this is a world in which science was unsure of

itself when it came to culture or consciousness and shied
away from the vacuum left by the church. It’s a mark of the
nature of the individual we’re dealing with here that he felt
no such inhibition. Let’s find a suitable spot to take this a
little further.

(Leading the group towards the inner, undercover part of the car
park.)

Phil: (As the group is on the move) By the way I hope you’re
enjoying the way that – if we take the cars parked along
Longbrook Street as a linear one dimensional car park, and the
plane of Howell Road car park as a two dimensional car park,
well, now we are entering a three dimensional one – it’s a
structure to our walk that partly we found and partly we placed
upon it –

But how can we stand inside or outside the dimensions of that

structure – what algebra would be suitable for getting behind not
just individual imagination, but the social sharing of it? Clifford
had a theory for consciousness… so, for a moment, let’s imagine
this three dimensional car park is a head, and we can… like
Clifford imagined doing with his audience – walk inside their
brains and see the backs from the inside.

11 - Inside multistorey

Matthew (?) : As you can see we are in the tradition, here,

of desperate editors of New Scientist and producers of
BBC science programmes at their wits’ end when faced
with presenting a piece on something physically
unrepresentable – put a piece of geometric abstract art
behind it.

(Points to abstract mural on wall of the car park.)

Phil: Rather like that conventional attitude to matter – as

something living in a background medium – the general view of
consciousness in Clifford’s lifetime was that it was something
separate from physical matter, but living in it – either an
immortal soul or a personality capable of genius – for the
scientists the best they were coming up with was a ghost in the
brain machine. Just as Clifford challenged the duality of matter
and aether, so he challenged the duality of consciousness and
matter – and, as usual, he began his challenge by thinking hard
about what he could actually observe.

He looked at something outside himself – say, this geometric

art… and he knew that he was able to create in his brain a mental
configuration of it – something that was different from the art
itself… and he called this configuration an ‘object’… this
“object” was something that he could explore and examine.

Now he also observed that other people also could look at this
art and form their own mental configuration of it – their own
object.

But when he came to trying to form a mental configuration of

another person’s mental configuration – then he felt that things
were out of the loop – this wasn’t a n ‘object’ – this was an
‘eject’ – he invented his own name for it – this was something
“thrown out of consciousness”.

But this is Clifford – the universe is what it says it is – what it

says on the packet – universal – “it seems that to follow that the
belief in the existence of other men’s minds like our own, but
not part of us, must be inseparably associated with every process
whereby discrete impressions are built together into an object. I
do not, of course, mean that it presents itself in consciousness as
distinct, but I mean that as an object is formed in my mind (i.e.
that complex of feeling about an external object), a fixed habit
causes it to be formed as a social object, and insensibly
embodies in it a reference to the minds of other men. And this
sub-conscious reference to supposed ejects is what constitutes
the impression of externality in the object, whereby it is
described as not-me.” (p.75 vol 2, Essays)

“A fixed habit”? Where does that suddenly come from?

Clifford roots this “social habit” in physical matter. He calls it

‘mind-stuff’ and suggests it might be present in everything –
indivisible units of matter that are not conscious in themselves,
but which possess the potential to become conscious, when
forming in sufficient complexity:“…(W)hen molecules are so
combined together as to form the film on the underside of a
jellyfish, the elements of mind-stuff which go along with them
are so combined as to form the faint beginning of Sentience….
When matter takes the complex form of a living human brain,
the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of a human
consciousness, having intelligence and volition.”

Once again, universality was Clifford’s guiding principle – what

held true in one part of the universe would hold true in every
other part – not only in a jellyfish, but in a human brain ….

“There is no … prima facie case against the dynamical

uniformity of Nature; and I make no exception in favour of that
slykick force which fills existing lunatic asylums and makes
private houses into new ones” (p.78, vol 2, Essays)

There is no magic to this consciousness, it is made up the same

material as everything else and everything else has this material.

I could say now: “It would be easy to join with his

contemporaries and present day biographers in suggesting that
this is one hypothesis that Clifford would soon have dropped.”
But, actually, this is an edge… an edge of un-respectability
where I feel comfortable… it’s a place where things happen, a
fractal border, a third space…

So I’m pretty suspicious of my own enjoyment of it.

On the other hand, though… let me enjoy myself for two

minutes here! – over 100 years before the development of
Consciousness Studies Clifford seems to have combined – or,
indeed, refined – two of the main theories of consciousness
emerging from contemporary Consciousness Studies; one: that
consciousness is in everything, two: that consciousness is a
product of complexity (in the literal sense) …

… as well as the idea of consciousness being made of made up

from irreducible units of consciousness – something like the
memes of memetic theory… that, as yet, highly disreputable
attempt to create a theory of the natural selection of
consciousness… that I enjoy…

In his introduction to an edition of ‘The Common Sense’,

Bertrand Russell writes – “….over-emphasised .. quaternions”
and, yet, now they are habitually used in Quantum Mechanics
….

of course, that proves nothing about the validity of “mind-stuff”

Matthew: As the theology dissolved, we were left, towards

the end of the 20th century with a rather bleak,
mechanistic view of the human being/brain. Rather like
this car park. Functional, made of matter, with certain
structures, pathways, etc. But with the rise of Quantum
Mechanics (which he sort of foresaw) questions started to
be asked about consciousness. This idea that there's
another bit we can't capture with our mechanistic science.

(1) As well as embracing Dirac's algebra (which is used in

QM) it embraces Pauli's algebra of 'spin matrices'. Later in
his life, Wolfgang Pauli collaborated with Carl Jung in an
attempt to come up with a unifying theory for psyche and
matter. This is generally seen as a bit of non-starter, but
more recent scholarship (looking at letters between Jung,
Pauli, von Franz), suggest there's more to it. WC was even
ahead of his time here - could be a link?

(2) Penrose, as well as working on twistor theory, has

been a major player in the emerging field of
'consciousness studies'. Emperor's New Mind was a
watershed in this. This is a book WC would have eagerly
read, as he was very concerned with the unification of
mind and matter.

Phil: I wonder if Clifford would enjoy the irony that the editor of
the main Consciousness Studies Journal is a de-frocked Anglican
priest living just outside Exeter.

12 – No. 82 Longbrook Street

(On the way one of us goes into the New Horizon to pick
up the Clifford Sign (the sculpture made by Tony Weaver).

Phil: William Clifford would have enjoyed seeing the New

Horizon café here – with its Egyptian proprietors serving
Egyptian cuisine – he learned Arabic, and, as a republican and a
resolute anti-Tory, he was a great admirer of what he saw as the
non-absolutism in arab politics. (I’m minded to cut this next
bit: At Algiers Clifford attended a lecture on Arabic at the
Museum there and was particularly taken with a quotation from
the Koran in support of a constitution that was “consultative and
not absolute” and enjoyed a story recounting how a particular
Caliph had boasted that he had never swerved from the path of
justice and was surprised when a soldier looked up and said:
“Inshallah, and if you had our swords would have speedily
brought you back!” (see p.57 volume 1 of Essays) )

It was a classically influenced arab culture he admired: as much

scientific method as religion, a culture seen through the prism of
his own desires … arising from the tradition of Pythagorus and
the Stoics – in which a believer is exhorted to “Know, so far as
is permitted thee, that Nature is in all things uniform” – this
sense of order Clifford believed was the first step in the arts of
life, and that “as far as is permitted thee” was a warning never to
assume any ‘law’ of uniformity would be sure to hold forever
and in every circumstance, but was, rather, a guide to human
conduct… this devout science was the “light and right driven out
of Europe by the Church… (that) found a home in the far East
with the Omaiyad and Abbasside caliphs … (so) across the north
of Africa came again the progressive culture of Greece and
Rome, enriched with precious jewels of old world lore; it took
firm ground in Spain, and the light and right were flashed back
into Europe from the blades of Saracen swords.” (p.265-266
Cosmic Emotion, vol 2, Essays)

(See the story of the Saracen’s Head in the Crab Man Document
in Mythogeography.)

I don’t remember that from school history lessons!

(Matthew emerges with Tony’s sign and we all return to

our starting point at 82 Longbrook Street)
Matthew: Clifford’s disappearance-and-subsequent
renaissance of Clifford Algebras since the 80's - there are
a lot of gaps…

Phil: Our walk is full of gaps... missed opportunities that we

have had to curtail for want of time… We wanted to walk along
Sidwell Street – where the model shop would have linked us to
William Froude in Paignton and his law of steamship
comparison – with that theory’s links to the work of D’Arcy
Thompson, applying ideas about the limits of scale and shape to
evolution – suggesting a validity for shapes and patterns, which,
for me anyway, should much more underpin the teaching of
science than it does

The video shop would have connected us to Oliver Heaviside in

Paignton and his work on defining electro-magnetism as a single
unified force – there’s a geography here spreading its
connections across the county…

Or we could have visited the Spiritualist Church in York Road

and mugged one of their clairvoyants… our walk is full of
gaps…

And so is our biography … there was is another famous Clifford

we haven’t even mentioned … his wife Lucy was a famous
author in her own right – and shortly after William’s early death
at the age of only 35 she wrote a sinister and disturbing
children’s story called “The New Mother” in which two naughty
children – who persist in naughtiness even when warned – find
their mother replaced by a new mother with artificial electric
eyes and a mechanical tail… having lost her husband so young
it’s as if she cannot bear her children to follow his naughty
Faustian ways with its deadly risks…

Matthew: Mention Clifford's early death, Lucy(?), the

inconclusiveness of his life's work, only now rally starting
to come into focus...Maybe pull out the robotics book, and
evoke the image of horses and carts coming down
Longbrook Street in the 1850's, young WC mentally laying
the foundations for something then unimaginable.

Show them Tony's sculpture, explain a bit about it... the

corkscrew… the hyper-sphere…

Phil: the hyper-sphere is a ghost… of the corkscrew… just as

that shadow of Clifford’s corkscrew on Tony’s sign is a ghost…
as if one could reach out…. (making a corkscrew motion with
hand) … and take something from this place…

Hand out cards of planning officers... explain that we're

done but that there's an 'encore' if people want to join us:

13 - New Horizon ('encore')

Coffee, snacks, informal discussion of Clifford's Arabist

influences, Arabic origins of algebra and contributions to
geometry, 'discovery' of New Scientist amongst the various
newspapers and magazines...answering questions

Need to arrange soundtrack with proprietor, forewarn him

to time of influx, stash magazine, research Arab
contributions to mathematics and Clifford’s interest in
Arabism, Islam.