The point about the laboriousness of the process – possibly worth it if it works, certainly not if it doesn’t – reminds one of the physicist Leo Szilard’s visionary satire, ‘The Mark Gable Foundation’, published in 1961. The story described the creation of an endowed not-for-profit foundation for the specific purpose of slowing the pace of

... See more

In June 1983, Alexander Grothendieck sits down to write the preface to a mathematical manuscript called Pursuing Stacks . He is concerned by what he sees as a tacit disdain for the more “feminine side” of mathematics (which is related to what I’m calling the solitary creative state) in favor of the “hammer and chisel” of the finished theorem. By... See more

The big ideas were in place. The pleasure of discovery, the pleasure of finally understanding, was already fading. Surprises were becoming rare. It was simply a matter of putting on the finishing touches, the technical details, of conforming to the bureaucratic requirements of the official language of mathematics. In the final months of editing,

... See more