Subject: Re: [HM] Muerte de Galois
From: Bill Everdell (Everdell@aol.com)
Date: Wed Sep 06 2000 - 23:55:36 EDT
In a message dated 9/3/00 2:21:41 AM, Udai Venedem wrote:
<<I absolutely want to express my total disagreement with Mr. Felscher's
provocative attitude towards Galois:
<<<<no doubt, he was a most nuisible rabble raiser, and we should
be thankful to the Paris police that they kept him under arrest<<
<<or
<<<<In our times, students involved in the revolutionary attempts
of 1968/69 have made it to become president of the USA, or
chancellor of the republic of Germany. The mathematician Theodore
Kaczynski was moved by influences from the same sources.<<
<<finally
<<<<My reference to Kaczynski was indeed meant to be provocative.
But I spoke of Kaczynski the terrorist, not of the theoretical
revolutionary - just as I spoke of Galois who publicly had risen
a threatening dagger when he spoke about the monarchy.<<
<<I do not find it fun in any way. These kind of "provocative" are nothing
but amalgamation, and are totally irrelevant. Galois has never been a vulgar
terrorist. I suppose (at the best) Mr. Felscher as many others to completely
misunderstand the famous Galois's gesture with a sword, at a banquet on May,
9th 1831. This was reported by Alexandre Dumas who attended the banquet. The
sword scene is a very profound political symbolic protest, as the actual new
"king" was Louis-Philippe, the regicide-branch Orle/ans bourgeois champion,
who had replaced the legitimate Bourbon king, Charles X. Galois is a pure
Stendhalian hero. Stendhal's "Lucien Leuven" enters Polytechnique and is
expulsed for political reasons, very near to Galois (who is expulsed as well
from Ecole normale). Galois is socially nearer to "The red and the black"
hero, when Lucien is a millionaire's son, but Lucien, Julien AND Galois are
all revolted against hypocrisy, all are victims of a sentimental misfit
arranged by their enemies. And, quite like Julien, Galois, through his
"arranged" duel, is sentenced to death.>>
I (Bill Everdell) find myself agreeing with the French left here (and
admiring M Venedem for bringing in Stendhal, the ideal commentator on
Restoration politics). "Terrorism" only appears in Galois's movement when
the sword is raised, and since it is not used, an old principle of English
law would exonerate Galois of crime. Living as I do in a democratic republic
increasingly subject to plutocratic corruption, I can't help sympathizing
with silly young Romantic revolutionaries like Galois, his predecessor
Danton, his contemporary Victor Hugo (a converted conservative), and his
successors Lincoln and Gambetta, from whose democratic republican tradition
I benefit, and the sacrifices of whose defenders (and enemies) I feel bound
to honor.
On the other hand, I find Brian O'Neill's political/cultural history to be
simplistic in the extreme:
<<Goedel's destruction of Russell's dream of a final description
of mathematics shows the cultural battle in full force. Kronecker's
destructive attacks on Cantor are another example.>>
What Goedel did in 1931 to the Russell's project in _Principia Mathematica_
(1910-13) had already been done in large part by Russell himself when he
discovered his recursion paradox in 1901. Goedel and Russell, though of
opposite (at least in 1914-18) nationalities, belonged, I would argue, to
the same culture. Even more so did Kronecker and Cantor. The undermining
of some of the long-held logical certainties of Victorian laymen (and
laywomen) was undertaken by Victorian professionals, all of them academic
mathematicians and philosophers, all of them bourgeois (with the possible
exception of Russell). Kronecker, Cantor and Goedel were completely unknown
in other areas of high culture and academic culture (like painting, politics,
biology and music). Russell did become known in politics, writing his first
book on German socialism, but no one in politics ever expressed understanding
of his brilliant mathematics. It's not possible to prove a negative about
this impossibly large set, but I can vouch for the conclusion because I
looked hard for just such references when I was writing my book on the
1872-1913 period.
Russell, by the way, liked Walt Whitman's poems, but execrated the art of
Matisse and Picasso. I wonder if Galois liked Hugo's plays, Delacroix's
paintings, Berlioz's music, Lamartine's poetry, or Stendhal's _Le Rouge et
le noir_ (published in 1830). Their connection with mathematics is a lot
more robust than any connection politics might have.
In the end, I just can't see any connection between the mathematics of Cauchy
and Galois and their respective (diametrically opposed) political positions
-- even via the scramble for academic employment, which has been known to
turn even monks into fanatics.
Bill Everdell, Brooklyn
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