Shawn

“But Mandelbrot continued to feel oppressed by France’s purist mathematical establishment. “I saw no compatibility between a university position in France and my still-burning wild ambition,” he writes. So, spurred by the return to power in 1958 of Charles de Gaulle (for whom Mandelbrot seems to have had a special loathing), he accepted the offer of a summer job at IBM in Yorktown Heights, north of New York City. There he found his scientific home. As a large and somewhat bureaucratic corporation, IBM would hardly seem a suitable playground for a self-styled maverick. The late 1950s, though, were the beginning of a golden age of pure research at IBM. “We can easily afford a few great scientists doing their own thing,” the director of research told Mandelbrot on his arrival. Best of all, he could use IBM’s computers to make geometric pictures. Programming back then was a laborious business that involved transporting punch cards from one facility to another in the backs of station wagons.”
― Jim Holt, When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought

“In some cases, the reaction to Cantor’s theory broke along national lines. French mathematicians, on the whole, were wary of its metaphysical aura. Henri Poincaré (who rivaled Germany’s Hilbert as the greatest mathematician of the era) observed that higher infinities “have a whiff of form without matter, which is repugnant to the French spirit.” Russian mathematicians, by contrast, enthusiastically embraced the newly revealed hierarchy of infinities. Why the contrary French and Russian reactions? Some observers have chalked it up to French rationalism versus Russian mysticism. That is the explanation proffered, for example, by Loren Graham, an American historian of science retired from MIT, and Jean-Michel Kantor, a mathematician at the Institut de Mathématiques de Jussieu in Paris, in their book Naming Infinity (2009). And it was the Russian mystics who better served the cause of mathematical progress—so argue Graham and Kantor. The intellectual milieu of the French mathematicians, they observe, was dominated by Descartes, for whom clarity and distinctness were warrants of truth, and by Auguste Comte, who insisted that science be purged of metaphysical speculation. Cantor’s vision of a never-ending hierarchy of infinities seemed to offend against both. The Russians, by contrast, warmed to the spiritual nimbus of Cantor’s theory. In fact, the founding figures of the most influential school of twentieth-century Russian mathematics were adepts of a heretical religious sect called the Name Worshippers. Members of the sect believed that by repetitively chanting God’s name, they could achieve fusion with the divine. Name Worshipping, traceable to fourth-century Christian hermits in the deserts of Palestine, was revived in the modern era by a Russian monk called Ilarion. In 1907, Ilarion published On the Mountains of the Caucasus, a book that described the ecstatic experiences he induced in himself while chanting the names of Christ and God over and over again until his breathing and heartbeat were in tune with the words.”
― Jim Holt, When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought

“That there is a silent genocide of women and girls in the homes, communities and just everywhere is not a new story. That my great grandmother, grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, aunt, sister, cousin, niece, housemaid, co-worker, friend, neighbor and just about every female shares the same pain is not a new story. What is new in this story is how I stood up to say, “Never again.” Never again will a girl or woman get raped, killed, drop out of school, be harmed by our culture or be sexually enslaved. That is as long as I know about it. Never Again--not to any woman or girl again is the new story.”
― Betty Makoni, Never Again: Not to Any Woman or Girl Again

“only between 5 percent and 20 percent of forcible rapes in the United States are reported to the police; a paltry 0.4 percent to 5.4 percent of rapes are ever prosecuted; and just 0.2 percent to 2.8 percent of forcible rapes culminate in a conviction that includes any time in jail for the assailant. Here’s another way to think about these numbers: When an individual is raped in this country, more than 90 percent of the time the rapist gets away with the crime. —”
― Jon Krakauer, Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town