a science nest to avoid a liquidity crisis

To avoid a liquidity crisis, we have to convince our sponsors to squeeze the sponge…
We must make them an atmosphere within our own danger zone. It must be a lovenest, the blind love kind. Cause seeing is not believing any more. We must let them feel that even the expression “it is what it is”, does not apply to foam.science. Foam.science is out of the blue. There’s no trace of where it came from. It is here, a trace of itself.


I made myself a little mathematical niche. My own research project. Science is always on the edge they say. I have to keep moving to stay where I am. The object I study is not known by any but a handful of co-researchers. Each of them is also extremely specialized. We hardly know of each other what we are doing. In my nightmares I run around like a white little rat in a laborint, and my neighbors conduct experiments on me. Still, in spite of the risk of getting lost, we follow each other very closely. We haunt each other, so to speak.

So where is this research-niche? I collect things to build my nest. Research is a deceptive word. I don’t search, I find things out. And in between the things, there’s space for refinding. Or for definding. (The extra d’s, you could say, that’s the dada of science, but it needs some verifinding, before it will appear in any textbooks!). I say “refinding” in stead of refining, because, as we’re getting more and more niched, there is no more small and big, no more rough and precise. “Here” has no scale. So I can’t draw maps or make approximations. So I nest in things as such. Not objects that are planned and controlled, but things that lead a life of their own and that other scientists make their nest in as well.

As the collection grows, the space in between becomes more intricate. One thing becomes a container for an other, or its skeleton, or its abstract, or its extra dimension. Or they add up, divide, multiply … each other. This in-between-laborint can’t be entered simply. There always needs to be something doubled. So as the mathematical collection grows, I go from simple to double. There is no more “us and it”. I don’t ever reach the point of understanding or seeing an overview. So I start letting the things inhabiting me. Or I pair up with one of my neighbor scientists and we are in a medium of things.

It’s tempting to start building mathematics from scratch. Where has a geometry of strings and sticks lead us to? Drawing circles and squares, and unsuccessfully trying to square the circles. I consider it a joke of mathematical history, that Aphrodite the Greek goddess of love and beauty is said to be born from foam. All our search for beauty in truth, has finally stumbled on that foam. What if mathematicians had started by building a foam-refinery?

But I think starting from zero again, would be a mistake too. Better begin at two.