Abstract / Synopsis
On a bright spring day, the ancient building housing the English and Logic Departments begins to slowly collapse on itself, trapping McMann (an inept English professor) and Lucy Curt (a logician) in the office they share. As the Fibonacci repetitions of the building’s brickwork slowly peel away, McMann seizes the moment to tell Lucy stories about skunks, stories whose recurrent pattern finally leads to the unrecognized connection between a “message” burned into his ear by a wasp and the orderly universe for which he cannot find a language. At last, he looks up only to see Lucy descending a ladder, a sort of escape down Wittgenstein’s Ladder that leaves his language unheard.
DOI
10.5642/jhummath.201901.29
Recommended Citation
Hugh C. Culik, "What the Wasp Said," Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, Volume 9 Issue 1 (January 2019), pages 371-382. DOI: 10.5642/jhummath.201901.29. Available at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/vol9/iss1/29
