The meaing of mathematics in Against the Day.....

[Richard Fiero]

Ray Easton wrote:
>. . .
>Please explain to me what the zeta function has 
>to do with any "theme" of AtD.  I'd really like to know.
. . .
Here ya go:
“Every time I see one them Zetas, it makes me think of a snake up on its tail
being charmed by a snake-charmer, ever notice that?”
“These are the reflections that occupy your time?”
“Let me put it a different way. Whenever I see one, it reminds me of you. The
‘charmer’ part anyway.”
“Aaah! Even more trivial. Do none of you ever think beyond these walls?
There is a crisis out there.” She scowled into 
the stained orange glow of the justvanished
sun, the smoke rising from hundreds of chimneys. “And Göttingen is
no more exempt than it was in Riemann’s day, in the war with Prussia. The
political crisis in Europe maps into the crisis in mathematics. Weierstrass
functions, Cantor’s continuum, Russell’s equally inexhaustible capacity for
mischief—once, among nations, as in chess, suicide was illegal. Once, among
mathematicians, ‘the infinite’ was all but a conjuror’s convenience. The
connections lie there, Kit—hidden and poisonous. Those of us who must creep
among them do so at our peril.”

Ray Easton wrote:
>. . .
>The statement that there is a mapping is not 
>itself a mapping.  It is the existence of an 
>actual mapping in the novel that I am questioning.

Let me think and poke around a bit more.
This is a great topic in my opinion. It's too bad 
that the foundational crisis in mathematics is so 
far completely ignored by most of the p-listers. 
I'll see if I can resurrect RW Hamming. The 
crisis probably did not occur until 1931 when 
Kurt Godel put an end to David Hilbert's program. 
Not explicitly mentioned in AtD, it is probably 
pointed to just as World War I may be pointed to.