Allan Dowling
AT WAR WITH TIME: A LETTER
Dear Tim,
It was good to hear from you at long last, and especially
good to find that you still take an interest in my work. I have been
writing fairly regularly, and believe I have reached a point from
which I can see the goal ahead of me, the end of the long road. So
I am going to try to sum up my thoughts in this letter, to try to make
clear to 'You why I think that my work will some day be con–
sidered valuable, not just for the sake of enjoyment, although that
is extremely important, but also as a stimulus to further thought.
Without that belief it would be impossible for me to write at all, for
I have neither the spur of writing for money, nor the hope of honor
in my own day.
During my senior years at school my best subject was geometry.
I don't mean that I pursued the subject very far; only that I had a
natural gift for it. I have a logical mind, and once I had gone
through Euclid I never needed to refer to him again. When asked
to prove a theorem, if I did not remember the particular proof in–
volved I would make it up as I went along. And having at the same
time a fairly lively imagination I soon began to speculate beyond
Euclidean thought. It is safe to say that I had inklings of non–
Euclidean geometry two or three years before I ever heard of that
science, or any of its exponents.
However, my greatest interest turned out to be literature, and
a secondary interest, closely connected with the first, has always been
history. I find now that in working out the plan of my philosophy,
geometry and history are necessarily blended.
Instead of starting with the most primitive forms of organic
life, or with the birth of the stars, I start with what
is
geometrically
