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LogiComix opens with co-author Apostolos Doxiadis reading a draft of his own story. Welcoming the reader, he invites us to meet Berkeley Professor Papadimitriou, whom Apostolos must recruit to help him with the book. When Apostolos tells Papadimitriou the story he’d like to craft, we, the readers, get to hear it too. Along the way, Papadimitriou interjects questions, criticisms and suggestions to Apostolos as well as to his illustrators Alecos Papadatos and Annie diDonna. As the story unfolds, the creative team debate how to best move it forward. By the end Papadimitriou and we together come to understand that LogiComix is deliberately not Logic For Dummies, but rather a true story about passion, family, war, love, tragedy and hope. Like Godel Escher Bach, LogiComix uses self-reference to illustrate the power of recursion. Like Vonnegut (SlaughterHouse Five), the authors also use it to make the story more personal and engaging. Indeed I was particularly excited to review this book because of Papadimitirou’s role in the story, since he co-authored my favorite college textbook, a primer on computer science. (Also, I’m sitting on a long flight from Russia to California, so I have a few hours to kill…) The graphic novel format of LogiComix (now popularized by the Wimpy Kid and Maus series, as well as Hugo Cabret) is working well for me. The visuals promise to make even Boolean Algebra accessible. But more importantly, Apostolos draws us into the story with art that not only supports the narrative but also relays sub-plots and emotional texture. Often we see a human side to the characters that they otherwise don’t acknowledge, such as a wife’s jealous look, or a 12-year-old boy subtly covering his lap while his beautiful French nanny reads him a love sonnet. (I’m reminded of the beautiful French nanny who charmed me as well – so much so that I married her.) The excited boy is our hero – the great mathematician Bertrand Russell who devoted his life to the pursuit of a provably logical foundation for mathematics, as Euclid had purportedly done for geometry (at least before Lobachewski and Riemann each had his way with Euclid’s assumptions). Embedding yet another layer of recursion into LogiComix, Russell tells his own story in the form of a lecture delivered at an American university on Sept 4, 1939, the day the UK joined World War II. The lecture, titled "The Role of Logic in Human Affairs" promises an answer to the question hurled at him by isolationists as to whether Russell, as a World War I conscientious objector, supports the war this time around. Russell begins his story with an account of growing up in a highly superstitious home and gripped by fear of inherited insanity. No wonder he embraced Reason. When Russell graduates from Cambridge, he proceeds to seek out the great minds of his time for an articulation and validation of the basic tenets underlying mathematics. His travels take him to Germany (just 10 minutes before my Lufthansa pilot announces our imminent arrival in Frankfurt, where I’ll make my connection to San Francisco). Russell’s account of those days in Germany evokes that nation’s unique capacity for both logic and madness. There he meets Gottlob Frege and Georg Cantor (in a mental asylum), both legendary logicians who themselves struggled unsuccessfully to stave off the madness that often accompanies mathematical genius. "I fled the asylum," recounted Russell, "with a dark leitmotif roaring in fortissimo." A recurring theme of the story is Russell’s failures at love, as he depends solely on logic to master courtship, marriage and child-rearing, even as everyone around him succumbs to irrationality. His memoirs – humble and candid –recount his nerdy fumbles followed by his inconsiderate prioritization of work over family. Russell recounts travels through Paris, meeting Klein, Dedekind, Poincare and Hilbert. (Having made my connection out of Frankfurt, I, too, am traversing France.) I must confess that I didn’t study Hilbert, and LogiComix fails to impart an intuitive understanding of his philosophy. Indeed, the story fails to explain the work of any of the great logicians, so unless you already know the ideas, you’re somewhat in the dark as to how they relate to Russell’s search. Having said that, I can’t protest too much because Papadimitriou himself complains about this in the story. Apostos retorts that the story should trump the math. [What I discovered only upon finishing is a terrific glossary that expounds upon the thinkers and their work. I wish I had known about it while I was reading the story.] Russell’s search, enlightening and dramatic, is ultimately doomed by Kurt Godel’s brilliant Incompleteness Theorem. But in a way Godel’s Theorem liberates Russell, who redirects his logical faculties to more worldly affairs. Apostos brings it all home when Russell shares his life’s lessons on war with the American audience. (Judging from the view, I believe that I’m now back in the States as well!)
Contributed by renown blogger David Cowan who writes about science and superstition at WhoHasTimeForThis.com, sings a capella with Voices in Harmony, and invests in technology startups for Bessemer Venture Partners. Recently, on a flight from St. Petersburg, David taught himself to draw cartoons using Powerpoint. |
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