Fun Fact Friday - God Doesn't Eat Pi

Today is Pi Day, dear reader, and I hate to admit that my own celebrations have been rather lackluster. I haven't drawn any circles. I haven't memorized any digits. And worst of all, this morning I ate some scones. Square scones. Yeah, I'm a bitch.

But I do have a pi related fun fact for you. I hope it makes your day 3.1415926 et cetera times better.

Fun Fact: John Donne, noted pointy-beard proponent and poet, thought that trying to square a circle was going against God.

"I'm wearing a circular ruff because I love Jesus." - John Donne

"But where's the pi?" I like to imagine you shouting, dear reader. "You promised us some pi!"

I'm afraid I have to ask you to calm down.

Anyway, squaring the circle, or trying to make a square and circle with the exact same area, used to be popular amusement for mathematically inclined people. Especially people in prison. I'm looking at you, Anaxagoras! And in case you don't have fond memories of finding the area of a log's cross-section with Mr. Larson in the third grade, you may need to be reminded that pi is important for finding the area of circles. So there's your pi! But what of Pointy-Beard McPoetry?

Well, John Donne wrote this poem called "Upon the Translations of the Psalms by Sir Philip Sydney, and the Countess of Pembroke, His Sister." Okay. Can we talk about how much John Donne sucks at titles? That title is so bad, I'm going to pay someone to pee on it later.

"I also once wrote a poem about how I want to get in your pants. For Jesus." - John Donne

Anyway, there is this bit right at the beginning of the poem where Donne equates squaring the circle with trying to rationalize God even though he is eternal and infinite and all that jazz.

Seems pretty legit, right? I remember that part of the Bible when God said unto Moses, "Thou shalt not toil with the circles and the squares for they are unclean. Whoever so meddles with the maths shall be put to death. Or perhaps just chastised in a poorly-titled poem."

"I'm so Donne with poems right now." - Pi

And maybe John Donne would feel that his metaphor is vindicated by the fact that you can't square the circle because pi is a tricky little transcendental, but then world record holder Hiroyoki Gotu would recite pi to 42,195 digits, John Donne's head would explode, and we could all have a nice piece of pie.