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"Mathematicians Fiction."
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The infinities
On a languid midsummer's day in the countryside, old Adam Godley, a renowned theoretical mathematician lies dying. Gathered around him are his family: Adam, his son; Adam's wife; Petra, his daughter; his wife Ursula, stepmother to his children; and his daughter's young man. But the Godley family is not alone in their vigil. Around them hovers a family of mischievious immortals who begin to stir up trouble to sometimes wildly unintended effect.
Book
Sophie's Diary
Sophie's Diary: A Mathematical Novel is a work of fiction inspired by French mathematician Sophie Germain. It chronicles the coming of age of a teenager learning mathematics on her own, growing up during the most turbulent years of the French Revolution. The fictionalized diary uses mathematics, intertwined with historically-accurate accounts of the social chaos that reigned in Paris between 1789 and 1794, to describe the learning journey of a remarkable girl that became the first and only woman in history to make a substantial contribution to the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. Sophie Germain was born in Paris in 1776. Little is known about her childhood or about her initiation into mathematics. Her first biographers wrote that, as a young woman, she assumed the name of a male student at the Ecole Polytechnique to submit her own work to Lagrange. Yet, no biography has explained how Germain studied mathematics before that time to encourage such boldness. Sophie's Diary is an attempt to put in perspective how a self-taught girl could have acquired the knowledge to enter the world of Lagrange's analysis.
eBook
One hundred twenty-one days
Debut novel by mathematician Oulipo member layers coded narratives across World Wars unlocking the entangled history of politics and science.
Book
LEIBNIZ ON BODIES AND INFINITIES: RERUM NATURA AND MATHEMATICAL FICTIONS
The way Leibniz applied his philosophy to mathematics has been the subject of longstanding debates. A key piece of evidence is his letter to Masson on bodies. We offer an interpretation of this often misunderstood text, dealing with the status of infinite divisibility in nature, rather than in mathematics. In line with this distinction, we offer a reading of the fictionality of infinitesimals. The letter has been claimed to support a reading of infinitesimals according to which they are logical fictions, contradictory in their definition, and thus absolutely impossible. The advocates of such a reading have lumped infinitesimals with infinite wholes, which are rejected by Leibniz as contradicting the part–whole principle. Far from supporting this reading, the letter is arguably consistent with the view that infinitesimals, as inassignable quantities, are mentis fictiones, i.e., (well-founded) fictions usable in mathematics, but possibly contrary to the Leibnizian principle of the harmony of things and not necessarily idealizing anything in rerum natura. Unlike infinite wholes, infinitesimals—as well as imaginary roots and other well-founded fictions—may involve accidental (as opposed to absolute) impossibilities, in accordance with the Leibnizian theories of knowledge and modality.
Journal Article
Odds against tomorrow
While working for a mysterious financial consulting firm that offers insurance to corporations against impending catastrophic events, a gifted young mathematician becomes increasingly obsessed with doomsday scenarios until one of his actual worst-case scenarios unfolds in Manhattan.
Book
The imitation game, the “child machine,” and the fathers of AI
Alan Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” published in 1950, is one of the founding texts in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), although the term was not coined until 1958, 4 years after his death. From the treatment of human intelligence as computational and the brain as mechanical to the comparison of animals to machines to the disregard for the materiality of computers to programming as a stand-in for procreation to fiction-inspired science, many of the core tenets that have shaped the field of AI have their origins in Turing’s paper. A close analysis of the paper exposes some of the problematic logic underlying these tenets that are now proving damaging for both society and the planet.
Journal Article
Zero sum game
\"Cas Russell is good at math ... The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she'll take any job for the right price. As far as Cas knows, she's the only person around with a superpower--until she discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people's minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world's puppet master. Cas should run, like she usually does, but for once she's involved. There's only one problem--she doesn't know which of her thoughts are her own anymore\"--Publisher marketing.
Book
Counterpossibles, story prefix and trivialism
The aim of this paper is to argue in favor of the view that some counterpossibles are false. This is done indirectly by showing that accepting the opposite view, i.e., one that ascribes truth to each and every counterpossible, results in the claim that every necessarily false theory has exactly the same consequences. Accordingly, it is shown that taking every counterpossible to be true not only undermines the value of debates over various alternative theories and their consequences, but also puts into question the very possibility of such debates. In order to explicate this thesis, the close bond between counterpossibles and the so-called story prefix (i.e., the sentential operator ‘According to fiction F, P’) is explored. A number of possible responses to this criticism are also presented, and it is argued that none of them address the main problem.
Journal Article