Thank you
all for rushing to my rescue. You have told me that
1) Euler was
the most prolific mathematician in history, whose complete works may still not
have been published. Interesting and provocative, but not
very helpful. Our author is not likely to be making reference to something
unpublished.
2) That, as the father of the science of
Topology, Euler proposed a problem (unsolveable apparently) regarding the
bridges of Konigsberg. I did know about that & even
speculated that Ada Veen's towers and bridges might have originated in
Konigsberg's bridges and a tower there said to have served Kant as a point of
concentration.
3) Euler triplets may not be relevant (as asserted
by one of my mathematicians) -- but it is interesting to
wonder if Dr Eksreher's driblets don't have something to do with Euler triplets
(as x-rays are often taken to reveal various planes in order to give a 3
dimensional understanding -- especially in the 1960s before magnetic resonance
imaging and computer graphics.
4) From a mathematician who is
successfully evading flames in San Diego: "What is commonly called the Euler
problem, is the mechanical problem of a material point moving in the plane in
the gravitational field of two masses: . . . Now here comes an out of the blue
analogy: moving material point=Van, larger fixed mass=Ada, smaller mass=Lucette.
So "Van solving the Euler problem" means "Van being attracted to both girls but
slowly and inexorably closing in on Ada". Or something like that."
There's an interesting speculation -- but Van certainly doesn't
solve or resolve that problem terribly successfully.
5) From
the same inflammable source: "Other artists have created other
Antiterra worlds that overlap Van's world by the degree of their artistic
relatedness. This degree of this artistic relatedness is the Euler problem. By
solving this problem, Van then understands that his world is not "closed," but
rather has holes to other artistic worlds, and eventually to our "real" world.
Worlds created by other artists intersect and influence Van's world, just as
other artists have influenced VN's artistic world. The magic and novelty of Ada
is that VN literally takes the "good reader" idea and stands it on its head.
While a "good reader" is exploring the world of Ada, a character in Ada is
trying to explore the reader's world. This begs the question - is Van a "good"
reader? We can only explore his world only through the porthole of the author,
and Van discovers he, to, is limited to seeing and understanding our world.I know I'm not the first to express this theory, and I'm sure others,
including you, have done it better."
No, I don't
believe anyone has expressed this theory and I wish you would explore it
further.
and finally (6) That Ada is not a work of
mathematics. Now here I think is a possible error. I will
follow up with some evidence in another response.