So it’s been very nearly a year. Just two days shy, in fact. And for the benefit of my two readers, I suppose it’s only fair that I update this thing for once.
I know nothing about maths, though I have a great respect for it. I studied it in school, but have since forgotten everything I ever half-knew about differentiation and calculus. In some ways I wish I had the technical skill or inclination to decode formulas and equations, but other more practical ways, I’m happy just to appreciate from afar.
I have similar views about comic books (sorry… graphic novels…). I’m aware they can be very insightful and highly original, but aside from Alan Moore’s Watchmen, I have very limited experience.
As such, when one of the other teachers threw Logicomix at me in the staff room the other day with the words “Read that, it’ll take you about an hour and you might learn something”, I could hardly say no.
Logicomix uses the life of Bertrand Russell to frame an introduction to philosophy and the foundations of maths. Sounds like a rip-roaring-read? It is, actually. Light-hearted and very readable, it’s an ideal starting point for anybody with a half-baked interest in philosophy who doesn’t really know where to start.
The comic follows Russell from his childhood to the middle of the Second World War, with his ‘quest for the foundations’ as the driving force of the narrative. The action flicks between Russell telling his story and the comic’s authors Doxiadris, Papadimitriou, et al. as they try to do the maths and philosophy justice. I’m a sucker for self-reference, so I was all over that shit.
Reviews I’ve read claim that the comic overstates the devastating repercussions of Russell’s Paradox (can the set of all sets that do not reference themselves contain itself?), but I’m in absolutely no position to comment on that. When it comes to comics, maths, philosophy, and logic I fit very much into the camp of “I knows what I likes”. And I likes this.
