On " Mad Dog" Russell

[Mark Kohut]

The  Story of Atoms was one of Bertie's first popular successes, popular science about all
The new physics discoveries and described as having more math in it than popular science books later came to have. 

Ray Monk sez a recurring theme of it is Russell saying: the words I use to describe what I am telling you---not the math---all MEAN MORE than the reality I am attempting to describe. 
Interesting. 

And, maths play a prominent role, even some kind of thematic one, in the book in which Bertie
Appears, Against the Day. There is one major reading of the math in it that sez Pynchon grounds basic math in his/ our real world, but for ' imaginary' numbers and much ' theoretical' math in the book the attitude is satiric. THAT math is a ' joke', for another purpose in the book's metaphors. Whatever.

anyway, in Monk's biography, he tells of how Russell (& Whitehead) in PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA
thought they had shown how math was grounded in " logic" but how WIttgenstein ( and others) proved a major fallacy in THEIR logic. When Russell came to revise for the second edition, as Whitehead dropped away, Frank Ramsey, who helped Bertie revise, cueing from WIttgenstein and WIttgenstein himself of course and others thought Russell had hardly tried to reestablish
His original case so THAT Principia Mathematica grounds math .....outside of logic, outside of our
common real world, so to speak. Ramsey, a ghost reviser, reviewed it negatively upon publication. .....also interesting, no? 




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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l