Sciolism Rocks

Challenge to self: Relate two things asked yesterday by two friends: Michael asked me about the (French) literary term mise en abîme, which he saw in this essay about a recent book. JG asked me about the base of the natural logarithm, e. And yes, they are related.

André Gide wrote Les faux-monnayeurs (The Counterfeiters) in 1925. It’s a novel about Edouard, an author who is writing a book called Les faux-monnayeurs. That is, the author is writing a book about an author writing a book about counterfeiters. A story-within-a-story. That’s a mise en abime.

The technique is certainly seen in all sorts of literature, not just French. Hamlet has a famous scene where a group of wandering minstrels perform the play of Hamlet. A play-within-a-play. A mise en abîme.I can think of two movies that use this technique. Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs uses it when the characters rent the tape of the movie and play it up to the point where they are in the movie. Thus, a movie within a movie, a mise en abîme.

Also: Robert Altman’s The Player, a movie about a man making a movie. Mise en abîme.

On my very first PC, I played a game called Wing Commander. To learn how to play this flight simulator, I had to go to a certain place in the game and enter a flight simulator. A game within a game. Mise en abîme.

It’s exactly the same effect you get by placing a mirror facing another mirror, or a video recorder that’s facing it’s own output monitor. It’s mirrors upon mirrors upon mirrors. Mirrors within mirrors.

 Now, JG, how can I connect this to e, the base of natural logarithms? Because the function e^x has an interesting and unique property: it is its own derivative. So, take the derivative of e^x, you get e^x. Take derivatives again, you get e^x. e’s upon e’s. Mise en abîme.

Taking derivatives of e reminds me of an old Indian legend. A young boy asked an old man what held up the earth. The old man said an elephant did. The boy asked what held up that elephant, and the old man replied “another elephant”. The boy once again asked “What holds up that elephant?” and the old man replied “It’s elephants all the way down.”