“I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky. / In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics: / Plagiarize!”*…
In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. But as Joseph Howlett reports, a trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism…
When Demian Goos followed Karin Richter into her office on March 12 of last year, the first thing he noticed was the bust. It sat atop a tall pedestal in the corner of the room, depicting a bald, elderly gentleman with a stoic countenance. Goos saw no trace of the anxious, lonely man who had obsessed him for over a year.
Instead, this was Georg Cantor as history saw him. An intellectual giant: steadfast, strong-willed, determined to bring about a mathematical revolution over the clamorous objections of his peers.
It was here, at the University of Halle in Germany, that Cantor launched his revolution 150 years ago. Here, in 1874, he published one of the most important papers in math’s 4,000-year history. That paper crystallized a concept that had long been viewed as a mathematical malignancy to be shunned at all costs: infinity. It forced mathematicians to question some of their longest-held assumptions, rocking mathematics to its very foundations. And it gave rise to a new field of study that would eventually bring about a rewriting of the entire subject.
Now Goos, a 35-year-old mathematician and journalist, had come to Halle — a five-hour train ride from his home in Mainz — to look at some letters from Cantor’s estate. He’d seen a scan of one and was pretty sure he knew what the others would say. But he wanted to see them in person.
Richter — who, like Cantor, had spent her entire career here, first as a research mathematician and then, after retiring, as a lecturer on the history of mathematics — gestured for Goos to sit. She lifted a thin blue binder from the scattered piles of books and papers on her desk. Inside were dozens of plastic sheet protectors, each one containing an old, handwritten letter.
Goos began flipping through, contemplating the letters with the relish of an archaeologist entering a long-lost tomb. Then he reached a particular page and froze. He struggled to catch his breath.
It wasn’t the handwriting. At this point in his research on Cantor, he’d become accustomed to the strange, nearly indecipherable Gothic script known as kurrentschrift, which Germans used until around 1900.
It wasn’t the signature. He knew that the German mathematician Richard Dedekind had been a key player in Cantor’s quest to understand infinity and solidify math’s foundations, and that the two had exchanged many letters.
It was the date: November 30, 1873.
He’d never seen this letter before. No one had. It was believed to be lost, destroyed in the tumult of World War II or perhaps by Cantor himself.
This was the letter that had the power to rewrite Cantor’s legacy. The letter that proved once and for all that Cantor’s famous 1874 paper, the one that would go on to reshape all of mathematics, had been an act of plagiarism…
The extraordinary story of unearthing this extraordinary story: “The Man Who Stole Infinity,” from @quantamagazine.bsky.social.
See also: “How Can Infinity Come in Many Sizes?“
* Tom Lehrer (not just a glorious songwriter, but also a gifted mathematician), “Lobachevsky” (referring to the mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky— “not intended as a slur on [Lobachevsky’s] character [but chosen]”solely for prosodic reasons”)
###
As we confer credit where credit is due, we might spare a thought for Charles-Jean Étienne Gustave Nicolas, baron de la Vallée Poussin; he died on this date in 1962. A Belgian mathematician, he is best known for proving the prime number theorem (which formalized the intuitive idea that primes become less common as they become larger by precisely quantifying the rate at which this occurs). So great was the contribution that the King of Belgium ennobled him with the title of baron.
“Mr. Hackett turned the corner and saw, in the failing light, at some distance, his seat”*…
Michael Wolf is an award-winning and widely-exhibited photographer famous for his documentation of big city architecture and life around the world, but especially in Hong Kong… Consider this series…
Much more at “Informal Seating Arrangements in Hong Kong” and more of Wolf’s other wonderful work on his site.
* Samuel Beckett, Watt
###
As we grab a chair, we might keep our focus on Hong Kong: it was on this date in 1978 that Snake in Eagle’s Shadow was released. A Hong Kong martial arts action comedy film, it was the debut of director Yuen Woo-ping, and the breakthrough outing for its stars, Jackie Chan, Hwang Jang-lee, and (Yuen Woo-ping’s real life father) Yuen Siu-tien.
The film is the story of Chien Fu (Jackie Chan), an orphan who is bullied at a kung fu school, but meets an old beggar, Pai Cheng-tien (Yuen Siu-tien), who becomes his sifu (teacher) and trains him in Snake Kung Fu. The film established Chan’s slapstick kung fu comedy style– which he further developed with Drunken Master, also directed by Yuen Woo-ping, released in the same year, and also starring Jackie Chan, Hwang Jang-lee and Yuen Siu-tien. Snake in Eagle’s Shadow (and Drunken Master) established the basic plot structure used in many, many martial arts films internationally since then.
“Conspiracy theories also bring another reward: power.”*…
Barrett Brown interrogates our fascination with conspiracies and conspiracy theories…
Over a period of several years in the early seventeenth century, there appeared in Western Europe three manifestos laying out the history of the theretofore unheard-of Rosicrucian order, whose secret directorate was said to employ powerful magical-scientific techniques in service to sociopolitical reform. This naturally led to quite a bit of public speculation, which gradually abated in the absence of further pronouncements; within a few generations the only parties ascribing any significance to the incident tended to be dubious characters claiming to be Rosicrucians themselves, rarely with much to show for it. Thus, as a result of its gradual association with cranks, the Rosicrucian story developed a kind of inoculation against serious scrutiny.
It wasn’t until the sixties that the British historian Dame Frances A. Yates breached the actual nature and extent of the thought movement that informed both the manifestos and its audience. In her book The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, she demonstrates that the texts were written as anti-Hapsburg, proreformist propaganda drawing on doctrines associated with the sixteenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon, and that this was understood by commentators on both sides; that the surreal “alchemical wedding” described therein references the 1613 marriage of England’s Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V of the Palatinate, widely heralded as the linchpin of a proto-Protestant alliance capable of establishing such reform by force; that the broader proposals were indeed taken seriously by scholars, not as scripture but rather as a set of visionary policy proposals dressed in metaphor, akin to Bacon’s The New Atlantis; and that enthusiasts such as Elias Ashmole would directly implement those proposals by founding the Royal Society, establishing the primacy of science. Rather than being a footnote to premodern folly, the Rosicrucian affair turns out to sit at the narrative center of the modern world.
There’s a lesson here that bears attention today, at the apparent twilight of the same modern world, when the fundamental problem we face involves the degree to which the truth must now compete with such a vast multiplicity of falsehoods that discovering truth itself becomes unviable. Consider that so much of consequence to our own heritage should have been so misunderstood for as long as the Rosicrucian manifestos; it seems that crucial facts can be effectively concealed from serious attention simply by being visibly subject to the unserious sort. Such facts are gradually imbued with a sort of de facto defense mechanism against scrutiny, whereby the mere act of taking an interest in them serves to discredit professional researchers and journalists…
From the 1600s to recent history and the insights of Umberto Eco, what’s going on– and why: “The Ur-“Conspiracy”: History of a Pseudoconcept,” from @parisreview.bsky.social.
Apposite: “Revisionist History — Aliens, Secrets and Conspiracies,” by Steve Blank
* “The emotional appeal of a conspiracy theory is in its simplicity. It explains away complex phenomena, accounts for chance and accidents, offers the believer the satisfying sense of having special, privileged access to the truth. For those who become the one-party state’s gatekeepers, the repetition of these conspiracy theories also brings another reward: power.” – Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
###
As we ponder perspicacity, we might we send inquisitive birthday greetings to Michel Eyquem de Montaigne; he was born on this date in 1533. Best known during his lifetime as a statesman, Montaigne is remembered for popularizing the essay as a literary form. His massive volume Essais (translated literally as “Attempts” or “Trials”)– contain what are, to this day, some of the most widely-influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a powerful impact on writers ever after, from Descartes, Pascal, and Rousseau through Hazlitt, Emerson, and Nietzsche, to Zweig, Hoffer, and Asimov. Indeed, he’s believed to have been an influence on the later works of Shakespeare.
And while he pre-dates the “Rosicrucian” publications mentioned above, he observed (in Essais) “the truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe.”
Lastly, a good reason to step outside and look up early this evening: “February’s ‘rare planetary alignment’ is coming — here’s what to expect from the planet parade“
“One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language”*…
Our language is constantly evolving. Colin Gorrie offers a nifty illustration of the development of English…
A man takes a train from London to the coast. He’s visiting a town called Wulfleet. It’s small and old, the kind of place with a pub that’s been pouring pints since the Battle of Bosworth Field. He’s going to write about it for his blog. He’s excited.
He arrives, he checks in. He walks to the cute B&B he’d picked out online. And he writes it all up like any good travel blogger would: in that breezy LiveJournal style from 25 years ago, perhaps, in his case, trying a little too hard.
But as his post goes on, his language gets older. A hundred years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words, and his attitude gets older too, as the blogger’s voice is replaced by that of a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler.
By the middle of his post, he’s writing in what might as well be a foreign language.
But it’s not a foreign language. It’s all English.
None of the story is real: not the blogger, not the town. But the languageis real, or at least realistic. I constructed the passages myself, working from what we know about how English was written in each period.
It’s a thousand years of the English language, compressed into a single blog post.
Read it and notice where you start to struggle. Notice where you give up entirely. Then meet me on the other side and I’ll tell you what happened to the language (and the blogger)…
Read it and reap: “How far back in time can you understand English?” from @colingorrie.bsky.social.
###
As we travel through time, we might note that not every new emergence becomes sedimented into the evolutionary path, as we recall that on this date in 1980 that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences awarded the first– and last– Grammy for Best Disco Recording. By the time that the Academy got around to it, disco was pretty much dead.
“I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor was the big winner that night. The other nominees were: Earth, Wind & Fire for “Boogie Wonderland,” Michael Jackson for “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough,” Donna Summer for “Bad Girls,” and Rod Stewart for “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” (In January 2020, Gaynor won her second Grammy Award in her career for her gospel album Testimony.)
“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”*…
News you can use…
I kept throwing away food because I couldn’t remember when I bought it. Thursday’s chicken from Monday? No idea if it was still safe. DoesItLast gives a clear answer based on FDA/USDA guidelines, so you can decide with information instead of guessing…
E.g…
Instant answers for safe food storage: “How long does food last?“
See also: “The Curious History of Leftovers” (source of the image above)
* Calvin Trillin
###
As we burp the container, we might spare a thought for a man who made a monumental contribution to food preservation and storage: John Landis Mason; he died on this date in 1902. A tinsmith, he patented the metal screw-on lids for fruit jars that have come to be known as Mason jars (many of which were printed with the line “Mason’s Patent Nov 30th 1858”).
That same year he invented the screw top salt shaker.
You must be logged in to post a comment.