How are more people not obsessed with knots?
It's the purest form of human creativity! It's nothing but a strait line and humans have figured out how to twist and turn it into a million different objects and endless uses. Our entire species has propelled itself into a realm of knowledge built on the fundamental twisting of a simple lines and observing those properties.
The clothes you wear are knots. Every surgery you have ends in knots. The combined effect of knots on our technology and understanding of the world is fascinating.
Only humans can see a rope, have a picture in their heads of what it should look like and then set forth on creating it. It's just such a precious nugget of what it means to be human and have the urge to fuck around with shit.
> The clothes you wear are knots. Every surgery you have ends in knots.
The space robot you send to another planet utilizes knots: https://www.planetary.org/articles/20120905-knots-on-mars
"It might surprise most people to learn that multitudes of knots tied in cords and thin ribbons have probably traveled on every interplanetary mission ever flown. If human civilization ends tomorrow, interplanetary landers, orbiters, and deep space probes will preserve evidence of both the oldest and newest of human technologies for thousands, if not millions of years.
Knots are still used in this high-tech arena because cable lacing has long been the preferred cable management technique in aerospace applications. That it remains so to this day is a testament to the effectiveness of properly chosen knots tied by skilled craftspeople. It also no doubt has a bit to do with the conservative nature of aerospace design and engineering practices. Proven technologies are rarely cast aside unless they no longer fulfill requirements or there is something substantially better available."
> The combined effect of knots on our technology and understanding of the world is fascinating.
Knots as code, code as knots: https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2107
This is a big part of whatmade me take up knitting as a hobby – one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
Is knitting a really long knot?
At least some people say yes, but it could be useful or interesting to talk about why you ask and what difference you see between knits and knots. Perhaps it depends on how one defines “knot”, but it seems like most definitions I can find work for a knit sweater.
These first two links talks about a knit being a series of knots - slip knots specifically. The other two suggest a knit is a very long knot.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190519004510/https://www.nytim...
https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~rlg131/topology_and_knitting...
https://mathemalchemy.org/2021/03/04/knots-trivial-and-other...
https://iwoolknit.com.au/blogs/news/the-science-of-knitting-...
As an avid knitter, I can confirm it really is. In practice there might be multiple knots as you change balls of yarn for example but topologically each sweater is just a very fancy knot.
In fact, the words are etymologically linked, they’re really just the same word! See https://www.etymonline.com/word/knit
> knit(v.)
> Old English cnyttan "to tie with a knot, bind together, fasten by tying," related to Old Norse knytja "bind together, form into a knot," Middle Low German knütten "to tie, knot," Old English cnotta "a knot," from Proto-Germanic knuttjan, from stem knutt-. Of brows, late 14c. Intransitive meaning "do knitting, weave by looping or knotting a continuous thread" (especially in reference to plain stitch) is from 1520s.