From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5308 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Dana Scott Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Dangerous knowledge Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:37:19 -0800 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Dana Scott NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v936) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1259672996 9606 80.91.229.12 (1 Dec 2009 13:09:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 13:09:56 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Tue Dec 01 14:09:49 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NFSUH-0001Ca-CI for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:09:49 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NFRyE-000413-Cq for categories-list@mta.ca; Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:36:42 -0400 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5308 Archived-At: I think the premise of the work is silly. I knew G=F6del personally and many people who knew him. My long-time friend Robin Gandy was a close friend and associate of Turing. I think it is true that Godel was very frustrated by not being able to settle the status of the Continuum Hypothesis, but to say that his mathematics drove him mad is terrible pop psychology. In the case of Turing, the matter is even less clear. For him, persecution may have been a big factor in his suicide -- which also could have been an accident. G=F6del did suffer from paranoia, and Cantor was oppressed by religious questions, which he did relate to his theories of the infinite. But to conclude cause and effect seems pretty hard to prove. And what is the point?= [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]