Read this just before bed yesterday in a book I got from a dollar shelf. It struck me strange, as it begins in abstraction, then descends rapidly into a doubtful representation of history, then into Americana that is simultaneously wistful and condescending.
"If one may use the ridiculous to accentuate the sublime, one may say that the Greek delight in numbers was the rational counterpart of the hysteria which many young and old Americans experience when they encounter numbers in the form of baseball scores and batting averages."
-Morris Kline, Mathematics for Liberal Arts. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1967. (58)
(My mental response: No, Professor Kline, you may not use the ridiculous to accentuate the sublime.)
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