From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5307 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alex Hoffnung Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Dangerous knowledge Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:40:35 -0800 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Alex Hoffnung NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1259672995 9600 80.91.229.12 (1 Dec 2009 13:09:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 13:09:55 +0000 (UTC) To: Mike Stay , categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Tue Dec 01 14:09:48 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 1NFSUC-00019V-Az for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:09:44 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NFS0e-0004Ds-Fr for categories-list@mta.ca; Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:39:12 -0400 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5307 Archived-At: Hi - I think I watched this documentary a while ago. I watched only a few minutes of it today and then realized that I should probably be doing something else. However, I was interested and want to comment briefly. > In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant > mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt G=F6del and Alan > Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically > drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide. > I am not sure what it means for one's genius to drive him or her insane. >>From what I can gather in this summary and my recollection of the film, the director seems to exploit the illnesses of some of these men to provide som= e theatrical drama to the story. If this is so, then it seems rather irresponsible. If I am mistaken and have not watched enough of the video, then my apologies to the director. > The film begins with Georg Cantor, the great mathematician whose work > proved to be the foundation for much of the 20th-century mathematics. > He believed he was God's messenger and was eventually driven insane > trying to prove his theories of infinity. > This statement does not directly blame the illness on his struggle with mathematics, but it seems dangerously suggestive of this conclusion. Here is a quote from Wikipedia: Cantor's recurring bouts of depressionfrom 1884 to the end of his life were once blamed on the hostile attitude of many of his contemporaries,[9]but these episodes can now be seen as probable manifestations of a bipolar disorder .[10] This seems like the more reasonable, albeit possibly less glamorous description of the causes of Cantor's illnesses. Since I did not watch further I cannot comment on the others, except that I did not know of any mental disorders associated to Turing. Best, Alex Hoffnung [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]