(de)Constructivism

According to popular belief, academics are incapable of talking about anything that is not related to (their) work. This is probably one of the reasons why I decided to participate in Fred's idea to start a shared blog, hereby hoping to disprove this assertion.

However, my problem with starting something - be it a blog, a book or a conversation with the person sitting next to me on the train - is that I always end up spending way too much time thinking about the first words. Even these very lines were concocted a few minutes ago, while I was having a shower.
Somehow, this reminds me of my youth. More than once, I got my collection of Caran d'Ache pencils from the cupboard because I felt like drawing something, only to end up staring at an empty page, basically begging my mom for inspiration.
- "Mom, you have to tell me what to draw."
- "Okay, how about a helicopter?"
- "No, that's too difficult."
- "A tiger then?"
- "That is a good idea, but I have no orange crayons."
This exchange of random subjects and lousy excuses usually went on for a few more minutes, until either we converged to the classical solution - a car, to be parked on the fridge - or I got tired and decided to build something with my collection of Lego. Which, of course, often resulted in me repeating my question - mutatis mutandis.


I preferred Lego to crayons though as the act of erasing was a lot easier. And part of the fun. Whereas my own creations often survived a while, most of the demolishing happened once the friends who came over to play were on their way back home. For some strange reason, they never understood that Lego bricks are not meant to be randomly connected or assembled. There is a colour code to be respected: once you start using red bricks for example, you have to stick to this choice until you run out of red ones. And then comes the tricky part: you now have to switch from one colour to another, in the most symmetric way possible.


Once my friend asked me why I'd destroyed the helicopter he had constructed the week before. Well, it could have been a tiger too, I can't remember what my mom had answered to his question. Back then, I didn't know how to explain why I'd did so. This weekend however, I realized there's an easy metaphor.
So L., just in case you bump into this blog, listen carefully: think of my Lego bricks as mathematical axioms, and of your construction as a mathematical theorem. Even though you did prove the theorem, anyone who is but vaguely familiar with basic mathematics will tell you that even logical constructs - or, to translate into abstract words, your Lego designs - are prone to being as aesthetic as possible. You do prefer a clever argument over a lengthy calculation, even though this means you will have to sit down and think for a while - don't you? Well, in retrotort, that is why I broke your stuff into pieces.