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The Edge-Serpentine Gallery has a show displaying various scientists' and thinkers' "equations." Some are just banal or silly (like John Brockman's: "New Technologies = New Perceptions"--which could just as well be reversed & most often should be), but a couple are pretty good. Danny Kahneman's is actually funny & very close to an equation Bruce Duffy put in his Wittgenstein novel, The World as I Found It:

W/F = S [W=Will, F=Fear, S=Scope]

When I first came across that one I revised it to:

(W * T)/F = S [adding T=Talent]

Then, on further reflection, added the relevant exponent (and it does matter that much), Luck:

((W*T)/F)^L = S

It's a fun little game--but none of these entries compares to my all-time favorite (and completely insane) literary equation, Karl Kraus's formula for the female soul in his Aphorismen:

I've never actually plugged that formula into Excel to see what its graph looks like. Should I?

Comments

[Cosma]

Kraus's formula simplifies to 0. Further comment seems superfluous.