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Logicomix!

March 23, 2011 by Daniel Horne 3 Comments

RussellIn the recent Frege episode, Mark related the famous anecdote of how Bertrand Russell, the man who "discovered" Frege, later confounded him by pointing out a paradox apparent within his logical system. As Wes recounted, Russell's own attempt to ground mathematics in logic was also later frustrated by a young Kurt Gödel, whose early incompleteness theorems crippled the central purpose of Principia Mathematica.

Anyway, those of us who suffer nausea upon seeing the character ∀ can nevertheless relive those heady days with Logicomix. A comic book about the quest for absolute logical certainty makes an unlikely choice for an award-winning New York Times bestseller, but I must say its an entertaining read. To steal a brief recap from the NYT book review:

The story spans the decades from the late 19th century to World War II, a period when the nature of mathematical truth was being furiously debated. The stellar cast, headed up by Bertrand Russell, includes the greatest philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives and mistresses, plus a couple of homicidal maniacs, an apocryphal barber and Adolf Hitler.

Spoiler alert, per Seth: "Founding anything always fails."

-Daniel Horne

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Filed Under: Reviewage Tagged With: Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, logic, philosophy blog, philosophy of mathematics

Comments

  1. Wes Alwan says

    March 23, 2011 at 12:22 pm

    too cool; had to purchase

    Reply
  2. Daniel Horne says

    March 23, 2011 at 2:20 pm

    Cool, Wes, I hope you dig it.

    Anyone who wants to sample a few pages before committing can click on the NYT multimedia excerpt here:
    http://documents.nytimes.com/logicomix-excerpt

    Warning: This is not “logic for dummies,” which at the beginning I was half-hoping for. But it contains a few useful graphic illustrations of logical problems.

    Nor is it a perfectly accurate history, as it takes a number of liberties for the sake of narrative. But it’s true enough, and — more to the point — a fun tour of an exciting era in logic, mathematics, and philosophy. We talked earlier about how philosophical concepts could benefit from graphic illustration, and I think this is Exhibit A in support.

    Now if we could just get Frank Miller to illustrate Being revealing itself as itself…

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Logicomix on Not School | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast | A Philosophy Podcast and Blog says:
    November 23, 2012 at 12:41 pm

    […] also Daniel’s post on this, and a description on the Math Mutation podcast […]

    Reply

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