Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Before there were clock faces I guess they don’t really talk about clockwise and anticlockwise? Did people just say spin left/right? I imagine there was rarely any need to talk about rotations on arbitrary axes before modernity. Wheels turned “forward” or “backward” and other rotators direction didn’t matter Spin asymmetry is really a modern notion. Even the earth’s spin on its axis, and the anticlockwise spin of the stars around the pole star or the direction of vortices would not have been of any particular interest. Balancing spins really only became a non-trivial technical concern with helicopter propellers. Screws are referenced to the human body. It’s leftie-loose-rightie-tight ie rather than clockie-tightie. We have right-hand/left-hand type rules. Weird how most situations have a natural up/front/forward, removing the need to talk about spin Rotations and angular momentum are fundamental to spatiality but we think of space primarily in terms of translation
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phil
@phil
what other concepts are we lacking a term for because we don't have a tool that uses them? related thought: we rely so heavily on algebra because spreadsheets are the main way we model data / ideas. if we represented data visually or graphically, geometry would be much more embedded into culture. i'm sure there are large classes of problems and analysis that are better suited to geometry than algebra, but get overlooked because the spreadsheet is simpler or top of mind
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