Russell's LegacyBertrand Russell once had a curious nightmare in which he found himself on the top floor of an enormous library in the year 2100:
"A library assistant was going around the shelves carrying an enormous bucket, taking down book after book, glancing at them, restoring them to the shelves or dumping them into the bucket. At last he came to three large volumes which Russell could recognize as the last surviving copy of
Principia Mathematica. He took down one of the volumes, turned over a few pages, seemed puzzled for a moment by the curious symbolism, closed the volume, balanced it in his hands, and hesitated..."
[Russell was right to worry. Several years after the appearance of Principia Mathematica, Kurt Godel demonstrated that every mathematical system (or set of axioms) contains undecidable propositions. (See Godel)]
Russell, Bertrand Arthur William, Third Earl (1872-1970) British philosopher, mathematician, social critic and writer, Nobel Prize recipient (Literature, 1950) [noted for his profound role in the development of symbolic logic and 20th-century analytic philosophy, and for such
works as his Autobiography and Principia Mathematica (written with Alfred North Whitehead, 1910-13)]
[Sources: G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology; Rucker,
Infinity and the Mind; Time 100]More Bertrand Russell anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
Libraries Self-Doubt Mathematics Nightmares Dreams Legacies Books Philosophy Self-Deprecation Fears Hesitation
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