Carl E. Linderholm, Mathematics Made Difficult, World Publishing, 1971.

LINKED LOUD MEN; SIMPLIFIED

Loud men, abstractly, are capable of much more interesting combinations than Quiet Men. They may be linked together in chains. A simple configuration of this type is shown in Figure 11.

Loud Men, as such, exist in abundance; linked Loud Men appear to be very rare. Why is this? Topological biology seems to have provided at least a partial answer. We know from modern embryology that all men begin as Quiet Men; that is, a man is at first a tiny sphere in the womb of his mother. The potentiality of being Loud is developed somewhere in utero. If it can be shown that two fully developed Loud Men, not already linked, can only become linked by a major surgical operation, then the question, Why do we see no linked Loud Men? will have been reduced to the two further questions: Why are twin Loud Men never born linked; and, Why do no Loud Men choose to undergo a surgical operation so as to become a pair of linked Loud Men?