June Huh, deep thinking and the value of idleness | Letters

Trevor Jones and Tim Watson reflect on an editorial about the mathematician and would-be poet Prof June Huh

With reference to your editorial on maths and poetry (8 July) and the mathematician and would-be poet Prof June Huh, there is a parallel with Sir Christopher Wren and Le Corbusier, as Wren was a professor of astronomy and Le Corbusier had an honorary doctorate in mathematics and philosophy. Both had discovered the art of logic and logic in art: the Stem subjects of their time not being studied at the expense of the arts and humanities.

They had no problem of analysis versus synthesis - a deeply rooted schism that the psychologist Jane Abercrombie in The Nature and Nurture of Architects was critical of - it being assumed that it is easier to teach analysis than to teach synthesis, and that a student must learn to analyse before they can synthesise. She points out that in children the development of synthetic and analytic skills are simultaneous rather than sequential - not creating a divide between those who reject analysis as a basis for synthesis and those so tied down to analysis that they can never bring themselves to synthesise.
Trevor Jones
Sheringham, Norfolk