[Maths-Education] Mazes and Labarinths

[Laurinda Brown]

This concept of man's destiny inspires the new thinking on maze design. 
It harks back to the high noon of medieval Christianity. The death 
struggle of Theseus and the Minotaur is still at the heart of the 
labyrinth, suitably demonstrating to the faithful the triumph of good 
over evil.

Even today the awareness and spirituality generated by the maze is felt 
by those who enter it. Some experience claustrophobia or frustration, 
others a sense of liberation - children invariably start to run and 
shour for joy in mazes. Yet others are drawn to meditation in the 
introverted coiling of the pathways.

We in Britain are perhaps more fortunate than others in being 
introduced to the maze at an early age. As children we are nurtured on 
labyrinthism with "Alice in Wonderland", The author was a maze 
desighner in his own right. As a boy he used to stamp mazes in the snow 
of his father's North Country rectory garden. In his twenties he drew a 
maze for a homemade magazine. Being designed by the future Lewis 
Carroll, its course reverses all the rules of the labyrinth, but it has 
the promise of genius and the rhythm inherent in his Wonderland.

You who are about to enter this maze book my feel the pull and 
fascination of the ancient artefact. Book and labyrinth are both 
creations of the mind. Jorge Luis Borges has written: "T'sui Pen must 
have said once: 'I am withdrawing to write a book', and another time: 
'I am withdrawing to constrcut a labyrinth'. Everyone imagined two 
works: to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and 
the same thing'."

Peter, I'm sure that there are easier answers to your questions - just 
so happens I really like this bit of writing.

Laurinda 



On Mon, 18 Jun 2001 12:42:52 +0100 Peter Gates 
<peter.gates@nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

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> 
> Someone has just asked me whether there is a difference between a maze and
> a labyrinth. Now i have a feeling there is, but cant remember what it is,
> or where to look. Without any jokes about government departments, does
> anyone know the difference or where I might find a resource for it?
> 
> I have a suspicion it is something to do with patterns and structure.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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----------------------
Laurinda Brown
Laurinda.Brown@bristol.ac.uk

0117-9287019