“The teaching of mathematics in our schools is a suicidal scandal. How does it go in the University of Newton and Crick? If you get a first in mathematics, you can go on to research; if you get a good… Read More ›
Society
Manchester vs Athens
Mathematics is the combination of two traditions, the deductive greek science whose Idealtypus was geometry, and the manipulative algebraic techniques that Middle Age inherited from Arab science. Freeman Dyson, in the Gifford lecture “Infinite in all Directions”(1985) talks about a… Read More ›
Renaissance: Perspective and birth of mathematical Infinity
The birth of modern world in the Middle Age out of perspective in painting (Greeks did not have perspective) was due to innovations in Middle Age theology. The actuality of the infinite was born from Middle Age theology. See Paolo… Read More ›
Arretratezza e folklore (Gramsci)
From “Quaderni del carcere”, by Antonio Gramsci Einaudi 2001, vol. II, pp. 1375-1395 (here). In the English translation: In acquiring one’s conception of the world one always belongs to a particular grouping which is that of all the social elements… Read More ›
The problem of power
Upon reading Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion; Civilization and its discontents Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art Hans Richter, Dada Lunacharski, Narkompros the following problem springs to the mind. It revolves around the concept of evil, but… Read More ›
Guernica vs. “Gone with the wind”
In the wonderful interview below (now in “Fractured Times“, Ch. 20: ‘The Avant-Garde fails’) Eric Hobsbawm argues that 1) 20th century painters retreated into areas of conceptual art and distanced themselves from representation because cinema (and before that photography) conquered their… Read More ›
rtraba 