The Stein Differential: Gertrude Stein's Mathematical Aesthetic (2010)

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty. --Bertrand Russell Among Stein's many pronouncements about own methods, one stands out: she considered herself logical, writing exact and mathematical. In Wars I Have Seen, Stein remarks she naturally had [her] part in killing the nineteenth century and killing it dead, quite like a gangster with a mitraillette, because the era was completely lacking in logic [...] it had cosmic terms and hopes and aspirations and discoveries and ideals but it had no logic, and I like logic, I really (91). In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Stein (narrating through the eidolon of Alice) claims Gertrude in work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for and because of passion for exactitude her work has often been compared to of (Selected 198-99). Does Stein's work compare to that of or is it too circuitous to be logical, too imprecise to be mathematical? This essay argues Stein did adopt a mathematical aesthetic shaped by the theories of fellow genius Alfred North Whitehead. In asserting Stein adopts a mathematical aesthetic, I do not claim work abides by prescribed mathematical formulae. I posit the elements mathematicians find valuable in their work parallel the essentials of Stein's writing style. Four interconnected elements exemplify their shared mathematical aesthetic: articulation through incremental repetition and sequence; intense focus on type and pattern; the abandonment of particulars in favour of abstractions; and a time sense conjoins the past with the present moment. Stein's mathematical impulse, and turn from the influence of William James to of Whitehead, signifies a feminist defiance of patriarchy. Stein's poem Patriarchal Poetry embodies use of the mathematical aesthetic; its passages exemplify all four of its elements. The poem is an anti-narrative, feminist experiment replacing patriarchal grammar with a mathematical, genderless, abstract mode of writing. Before we can fully appreciate Patriarchal Poetry as the quintessence of Stein's mathematical aesthetic, however, we must first understand how Stein's larger oeuvre exemplifies the four components of a mathematical aesthetic, and the full extent of Whitehead's influence. Stein's work contains myriad indications of interest in mathematics. Even titles attest to this predilection--for example, Q.E.D, Two, Are Arithmetics, An Exercise in Analysis, A Circular Play, Three Saints in Four Acts, The World is Round, and Four in America. However, since Stein first asserted exactitude, critics have doubted it. brother Leo was among the first to scoff, declaring, Her pretentious simplicity is not profundity, but he has not been the last (Leo Journey 55). Robert Chodat, in Sense, Science, and the Interpretations of Stein, argues against considering Stein's work scientific or logical, and calls instead for reading Stein without dubious appeals to 'exactitude' or mathematics (582). He contends, There is little is law-like in the kinds of sense-making activities Stein's texts demand (603). I maintain Stein's sense-making activities echo Whitehead's mathematical innovations and share with Whitehead an aesthetic of what vivifies experience (Science and Philosophy 120). In evidence of Stein's pervasively mathematical aesthetic stands a fecund body of Stein scholarship grappling with varying aspects of the Stein differential. When viewed separately, this divergent body of scholarship seems to support contentions Stein's methods were haphazard and contradictory. Collectively, scholarship indicates Stein consistently employs the four elements of a mathematical aesthetic, as outlined above, in varying ways throughout career. …