The enigmatic res3ia article (see the Web link above).


Symmetry manifests itself in various ways - not all of them are obvious.


Sometimes, in mathematics and indeed the rest of science, in order to make any headway what is needed is a completely different perspective. In a situation such as this, getting it partly right would not do. Any proposed line of attack and subsequent model would be either correct or incorrect, and nothing in between. It would have to be the real thing. The required line of attack was one that would hopefully provide the theoretical physicists with the necessary mathematical tools to forge a unified theory - one that would finally encompass gravity. One's intuition would need to be stepped up several gears for this one.

From the outset, he had the self assurance that it was simply a matter of perspective. The problem needed to be looked at in a way that no mathematician had ever considered. Moreover, there would have to be a good reason why previous mathematicians had not considered it. He was sure this aspect was a vital clue, and it enabled him to direct his energy along fruitful lines. Many of the best theoretical physicists and mathematicians had battled with this problem. There are many reasons why certain mathematicians achieve insight to a given problem when others miss it entirely. It is not always a matter of who is more knowledgable or more clever. Other factors can come into play, such as mathematical style and the mathematician's temperament. All of these factors were well known and yet the problem had remained unsolved.

Modern mathematics has many powerful and sophisticated tools at the disposal of researchers. Mathematicians have been able to apply these methods to yet more unsolved problems, and so the number of theorems has grown - each one building on the entire edifice of accepted mathematical truths. The entire body of mathematical knowledge so far developed was huge, and certainly impressive in the eyes of the mathematicians themselves. This latter aspect was of the utmost significance to him. Whether it is mathematics or anything else, whenever human beings are too mindful of a pre-existing body of knowledge, expertise of others, or even the thought that previous workers were more able, there is a tendency for one's full creative potential to be weakened.