In
Logicomix, writers Christos Papadimitrou and Apostsos Doxiadis, depicted by artists Alecos Papadatos and Annie di Donna as characters in the book, have an argument about what kind of story their graphic novel is: Papadimitrou claims that it's a story about ideas and logicians' quest for the foundation of mathematics, while Doxiadis states that it's a story about characters, specifically Bertrand Russell, and also an examination of how logicians are more prone to madness than other types of mathematicians, with the lives of Georg Cantor, Gottlob Frege, Kurt Gödell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, et al. offered as evidence.
Seattleites were able to watch this argument carried out half-live, half via Webcam at Town Hall Friday, Oct. 9, at 7:30 p.m., as part of a science lecture series. Papadimitrou, a professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley who has also taught at many prestigious universities such as MIT and Harvard, was in person, manning the Power Point presentation, while Doxiadis, an equally credentialed mathematician, director and fiction writer, weighed in remotely by way of a laptop and a projector. The pair couldn't have found a more appreciative audience: there were nods; gasps of horror (when the tragedy of Alan Turing, formative computer scientist, was revealed)[1]; and laughter at the mention of the Turk Chess Player.[2] The specter of Microsoft loomed large over the proceedings.
Papadimitrou's presentation began with a rather pointless (considering the book's writers were (somewhat) in attendance) four-minute video intro (the writers used three-act structure! And a bulletin board with index cards tacked on it to organize the books' themes!), explaining the concept of philosopher, logician and political activist Bertrand Russell = hero = superhero = graphic novel. (Although, in all fairness, it was good to see artists Alecos Papadatos and Annie di Donna, also characters in the book, get some face time, albeit prerecorded. One wonders how the book could have been improved had their visual flights of fancy been given more rein – such as the sequence involving sets and cartoony, unshaven barbers.)
Papadimitrou then identified the three intellectual roots of computers and the Internet: calculation, artificial intelligence, and logic. (The number three got a lot of love that night, as it does in the book: not only is the book written in a three-act structure, it is a story about Papadimitrou, Doxiadis, Papadatos and di Donna telling the story of Bertrand Russell elucidating his historical relationship to the field of logic to war protestors on Sept. 4, 1939; in his story, Russell and his partner, Alfred Whitehead, gaze at a painting of three Danaides; the book concludes with a excerpt from the Oresteia trilogy.)
Also as in the book, many pioneering mathematicians were name-checked, such as algebra's namesake, Al-Khowarizmi, philosopher Chrysippus, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, proponent of behavior modeled on logic, and George Boole, creator of Boolean logic, which brought the discussion from BCE to the period discussed in
Logicomix, the latter half of the 1800s to the second world war. After sketching out some of the logicians' conflicts, as depicted in the book, Papadimitrou and Doxiadis explained their sad endings. (Doxiadis made the point that mathematicians, despite their reputation, have lower instances of serious mental illnesses than other pursuits … except for logicians, and postulated some reasons for that.) Papadimitrou and Doxiadis also included a disclaimer about the factualness of
Logicomix, saying that, although the discussions were very much in the spirit of what was said, the details and events were not necessarily true. (They also used themselves as Devil's Advocates, voicing opinions in the book they don't really believe, so as to create a Socratic dialogue.)
The pair then fielded questions from the audience regarding self-referential math, and why the story, which took eight years to create, was told in comics. Doxiadis conceived of it that way; it was obvious he was hoping to draw in some non-mathematicians as readers, as he polled the audience as to how many had come just as comics fans. (5%-10%, reported Papadimitrou, although an audience member insisted that he poll for people who are interested in math, logic and comics, which raised the tally to 50%.) Doxiadis also confessed that he liked history, and novels, but he didn't like historical novels, so he wanted the artists to do the heavy lifting on the period detail so he could concentrate on the characters and story.
The talk, and the book, raised questions about pedagogy in comics (though Papadimitrou disclaimed that he taught students, so for him the book was more about telling a narrative); scientific apparatus (basically, that there is no such thing as an impartial observer; subjectivity will always affect a scientist's empiricism); how these dead white men's arguments led to computers and the Internet as they are known today; and how to reach an audience of laypeople about the ideas behind the field of logic. It pinpoints and gives context to a moment that has shaped contemporary thought — Gödell's 1931 incompleteness theorem, which destroyed Russell's and many others' search for a complete and consistent set of axioms (self-evident truths), by proving them impossible. Basically, as
Logicomix points out, there are not only unanswered questions, but unanswerable ones. Which, perhaps, is why
Logicomix, Papadimitrou and Doxiadis still can't quite figure out if it's a story about ideas, or a narrative about characters and madness.
Notes:
[1] Renaissance man Turing, inventor of the Turing Machine and the Turing Test, was convicted of Gross Indecency (for his homosexuality) in the 1950s. He was sentenced to chemical castration and an inquest determined that he committed suicide by ingesting cyanide.
[2] The Turk Chess Player was in the context of artificial intelligence and computers. As the Turk Chess Player was merely a hoax, operated by a human chess player, hilarity ensued.
All art [©2009 Logicomix Print Ltd] in black and white because it's from the advanced reader's copy: the book is in full color.
Kristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2008
