Chris Woo — 胡仲平

Nope definitely a law student.  I can understand the logic gate stuff solely because that kind of logic is both mathematical (something I definitely understand) and electronic (something I really don’t).  I also did play around with basic circuit stuff when I was in college for fun, but never really took it seriously enough to actually learn anything important.  Also, If you sat me down in front of any of the more complicated circuit designs I’d probably go catatonic.

Logicomix is a essentially a biographical graphic novel of 60 years of Bertrand Russell’s life, spanning his birth to the beginning of World War II. It follows his work on trying to use logic, and eventually set theory, to create a formal foundation for mathematics that both uses few or no assumptions and is logically consistent.  It discusses his collaboration with Alfred North Whitehead on the Principia Mathematica, the first and only volume of their work to meet these goals.  This is contrasted with his fear of madness — an alarmingly common trait of logicians — and his blunders in his personal life.  It also contrasts the great quest to find bedrock principals for math with the debate over going to war against Nazi Germany (Russell was himself a militant pacifist in World War I but declared that war against the Third Reich was the lesser of two evils).  There is also an apt comparison to the greek tragedy Oresteia.

It also discusses the contradiction of looking for fewer and fewer axioms for math while simultaneously taking 362 pages to prove “1+1=2.”

I do have a few issues with the book. For one thing it, like many math histories obsesses over the “Great Men” who were involved. And certainly it is true there were great men in mathematics but collective obsession over it is something of an annoyance (For instance, the Pythagorean theorem predates Pythagorus in many cultures including those of China and India).  Additionally the history is perhaps too short to be a complete history of logic.  By essentially turning von Neumann into a punchline by ignoring the rationality of game theory and the practicality of the computer it has essentially come away with a negative impression of logic and logicians, a fact the book rightly notes.  In fact logic was not damned and continues in computer science, economics, math, law, and a host of other subjects. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem only damned the further study of the foundations of math and to imply otherwise is a disservice to the reader.

However, I was surprised that any of the concepts of both logic and math that Russell’s work concerned itself with were actually involved in the book and that they take the effort to rigorously explain these concepts.  In addition, the artist(s) of the book did some pretty impressive things with non-standard panels and an especially good page where Russell attempts to explain to Whitehead’s son about death.  Overall it was a very good read, and one that I think.  I leave you with this lame attempt at a math joke:

For:
Anyone who loves comics, set C
Anyone who loves math, set M
Logicomix is the perfect read for C∩M.

Thank you, good night. Tip your waitresses and try the veal.

I think I totally need to own this.