From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5312 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Charles Wells Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Dangerous knowledge Date: Tue, 1 Dec 2009 07:56:52 -0600 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Charles Wells 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 1259717401 29985 80.91.229.12 (2 Dec 2009 01:30:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 01:30:01 +0000 (UTC) To: Mike Stay , catbb Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Wed Dec 02 02:29:54 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 1NFe2T-0001KR-Po for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Wed, 02 Dec 2009 02:29:53 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NFdSJ-0001rB-8d for categories-list@mta.ca; Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:52:31 -0400 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5312 Archived-At: The graphic novel Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou has the relation between being logicians and madness as one of its themes. The novel is actually quite good, and I recommend it, but they make too much of the insanity stuff. One saving grace is that the novel has interludes featuring the authors and the artists arguing about that theme and other aspects of the novel. Charles Wells 2009/11/30 Mike Stay : > Here's the summary from BBC's site: > > 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. > > 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. > > Ludwig Boltzmann's struggle to prove the existence of atoms and > probability eventually drove him to suicide. Kurt G=F6del, the > introverted confidant of Einstein, proved that there would always be > problems which were outside human logic. His life ended in a > sanatorium where he starved himself to death. > > Finally, Alan Turing, the great Bletchley Park code breaker, father of > computer science and homosexual, died trying to prove that some things > are fundamentally unprovable. > > The film also talks to the latest in the line of thinkers who have > continued to pursue the question of whether there are things that > mathematics and the human mind cannot know. They include Greg Chaitin, > mathematician at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York, and > Roger Penrose. > > Dangerous Knowledge tackles some of the profound questions about the > true nature of reality that mathematical thinkers are still trying to > answer today. > -- > Mike Stay - metaweta@gmail.com > http://math.ucr.edu/~mike > http://reperiendi.wordpress.com > --=20 professional website: http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/math/wells/home.html blog: http://sixwingedseraph.wordpress.com/ abstract math website: http://www.abstractmath.org/MM//MMIntro.htm astounding math stories: http://www.abstractmath.org/MM//MMAstoundingMath.h= tm personal website: http://www.abstractmath.org/Personal/index.html sixwingedseraph.facebook.com [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]