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Thank you so much. It's a great honor and a great pleasure for me to be here tonight to introduce Christos Papadmitriu. I have had the pleasure of knowing Christos since 1975 when he arrived for a job interview at Harvard. I'd started it a year before and he was at that point finishing his PhD at Princeton. He joined our faculty the following year and we worked together on a number of things. We co-taught a course in those early days on combinatorial mathematics and we had a one particularly promising student who took a problem that we presented at the early in the class about getting a stack of pancakes in order by flipping wads of pancakes off the top and getting them from smallest to largest and Bill Gates and Christos got a paper out of that. Somehow however Bill was not inspired by either Christos or me to go on and pursue an academic career in which I believe he

could have been quite successful and Christos went off in a different direction and he and of course has had the most extraordinary scientific career and working across fields of computer science, working across the universities of the world and working as we now see across genres of expression. So let me say just a couple of words about each. Today is not the day and this is not the audience for cataloging his contributions to computational complexity, game theory and so on and today he's working in evolutionary biology in fact but let me just suffice to say that he's the recipient of the Knuth Prize which is the top prize for the field of theoretical computer science given only to a very small number of people over the few couple of decades but it's been awarded that the extraordinary recognition of the influence that he's had on the field of computer science. He's taught

at Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, University of California at San Diego and at the National Technical University of Athens. He has had a parapetetic career although he's now settled happily at Berkeley for quite a number of years and his writings. His writings have included textbooks, one of which was just mentioned, research monographs, hundreds of scientific papers of course. A conventional novel I would say not to belittle it but to contrast it with the graphic novel about which we are about to hear logic comics and I'm very excited to hear about it. Christos is a true Renaissance man. He's also a warm and wonderful human being and I'm very proud that I can number him among my friends. Christos, thank you very much. It's such a privilege to be introduced by this friend. I'm going to think about an interesting

topic. What are the intellectual currents that eventually led us to computers and the Internet? And I thought hard about the question and I identified three such ideas that are clear on the sentence of the computer. Calculation is the least surprising of all. Artificial intelligence I'll explain what I mean and logic. So let's incidentally logic. I'm going to dwell on logic much more and by logic I don't mean the rather superficial connection that computers have logical gates and transistors can implement logic but Boolean logic but I mean a much different historical one. So start with calculation. I believe that calculation had been the

most constraining bond of many many civilizations even though our civilization is the only one that is very much aware of this and because calculation is needed for everywhere in an organized society for land distribution, taxation, building, war, navigation. But interestingly some of the most sophisticated civilizations did not have the not represent numbers in ways that are conducive to calculation for example. How do you add these numbers there in Latin notation? And it's of course painful even to think about multiplying them. So by far the greatest advancing calculation was not a computer but the methods that we learned today in elementary school for algorithms are called for adding and multiplying and dividing

numbers. And these methods were if not invented certainly popularized by this man. He worked in Baghdad, he wrote in Persian and apparently he came from Uzbekistan so he's national hero in three countries. And it is this method that essentially meant democratization of calculation. I believe that this was a tectonic shift in civilization comparable to typography. And what I believe that it was very important for example I think that Galileo and Copernicus and Newton would be dead in the water without this method, without algorithm and his method. And then the computer came as the ultimate corollary of this story. So that's so much for calculation by artificial intelligence. I mean the dream of the intelligent machine.

Every almost every culture has sort of a creation myth that people or a person who tried to create something akin to a human being. And I have here the Golem of Prague. There is here of Alexandria's intelligent machine during sacrifice. There is the Turk, the chess plane Turk. I don't know if I'm far from here. And on the upper right I have Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. It's a wonderful film. I highly recommend it. The most empathetic character is on the right. It's a homicidal computer called HAL. And so this brings about something else that the dream for the intelligent machine is often in modern culture, the nightmare of intelligent machine. And it's very difficult to give a public lecture about computer science without getting the question. But professor, are you paralyzed by fear that one day you

are going to be ruled by machines? Which is I think a fair question, but I think I have an answer for this. All right, so logic. As you know, logic was started in the fourth century BC by Aristotle who invented syllogies. And in fact there is a much less known ancient philosopher. He was not Greek. He was a Hellenized Phoenician. His name is Chrysipus. And he introduced, besides the implication of Aristotle, rather what we would call today Boolean connectives and so on. That was in the 200 BC. Not very much happened in logic for the next 2,000 years. Until in the turn of the 18th century, Leibniz, a great German philosopher, mathematician and scientist, the man who brought us to great inventions, calculus and optimism.

Had this new dream that maybe you could use logic to resolve, basically, for decision-making. So his dream was that once we have to make an important decision about investment, world peace, we would gather data and then we would sit around the table and say, let us calculate and out of this engine, the right decision would come out. But he never really pursued technically this dream. It was Boolean quite a bit later who actually wrote the famous book, Laws of Thought, where he essentially invented modern logic. Except that, up to that point, logic was confined to essentially decision-making or in the case of Aristotle. It was rules of thumb for empirical scientific reasoning. But it would soon become an

important tool for mathematics to look at itself. So what was happening in the middle of the 19th century is a crisis in mathematics. So for most of you, the crisis in mathematics sounds almost an oxymoron. In the sense that mathematics can be either fun or impenetrable, but the point is that they are solid, stable, robust, and eternal. So there is nothing, how can you have a crisis in mathematics? But there was. Any sort of an initial jolt was that in the beginning of the 19th century, non-ucrygian geometries were discovered. But suddenly, the very solid fact that every educated person knew about mathematics, in other words, the theorems of jubilee, became relative. In the sense that it is true or not, well,

it depends which axioms you believe. And a lot of everybody was shocked by this among the ingenious people like Kant, in manual Kant. So the second jolt, perhaps the most serious one, was that towards the second half of the 19th century, this man, Georg Kantor, was brave mathematician who dared to deal with infinity. Infinity was something that mathematicians had dealt with with long sticks, because Gauss's advice, by the way, because they believe that this was a dangerous enterprise, to start proving theorems about infinity. But Kantor did prove fundamental and important theorems about infinity, the most impressive of which is that there are many kinds of infinity. There is vanilla infinity, as well as more complicated

kinds of infinity. And this, clearly shocked the mathematics profession. And they decided that mathematics had been tremendously extroverted, I was dispoined, because it was instrumenting the sciences. But then they decided, listen, we have to be careful, we have to look into ourselves and make sure that our house is in order. So they looked at the foundations and they tried to put them in order. And the first person who tried to do this, in initial successfully was Godloff Frege. It is considered the father of mathematical logic. And he devised a great generalization of Boolean algebra in which he invented quantifiers. Okay. At this generalization was much more suitable for attacking the problem in Kant, sort of, you know, the foundation of mathematics. And having this tool in place, he embarked on the writing of a long treatise, 1500 pages, on the foundation of arithmetic. And as he was finishing it, he, disaster happened, young upstart British mathematician, philosopher

Russell discovered a flaw in the foundations of Godloff Frege's work. So there is this poem by a Greek poet, Zismos Lorenzatos. He died a few years ago in the same town where I stay when I'm in Greece, Kifizia. So, you know, he is a great poet, and he says, in a different parallel universe, he could be the best poet of a nice country, except that he got the bad luck. I mean, it sounds chopinistic, but sort of, you know, it's my opinion. To be born Greek, okay, there has been an incredible number of great 20th century Greek poets. So, Lorenzatos, I discovered this wonderful poem about exactly this infant, sort of a very important moment of our story. So, it's the setback, beware of systems gravely old, of

mathematical strict causalities, as we are trying, stone by stone, to found the gold woven tower of the logical, castles and forts immune to contradictions, designing to volumes the foundational laws of arithmetic, or green gazettes that are arithmetic. In 1993 the first, 1903, a second, a life's work, having a digital blog for years and years. So far so good, but as Freddie Gotman was correcting, content, the printer's proofs already of the second volume, one curse logical for a paradox, one not as making identification, questioned by Russell Berffin, forced without delay the great thinker of Mecklenburg to add a last paragraph to his system, show me a great thinker who's registered through, accepting the reversible disaster. His foundations in brewing, his logic flawed, his work wasted, and his two volumes, imagine the colossal setback, odd load and ballast for the refuge cart. So, this is exactly what happened, and Bertrand Russell was not content to point

out the flow in the Freggers' work, but set out to correct it, and for this he joined forces with his former professors Alfred Whitehead, and they wrote Perchipia Mathematica. It took them 10 years to write it, there was no main, there was no flaws in it that I am aware of, but it completely failed to achieve its intended goal in our works to lay down foundations for mathematics. So, the whole community had to join forces in soldier-on, except that I'll tell you more about the Ludwig and Stein later, so I showed up. Ludwig and Stein was Russell's most distinguished student, and also Nemesis. So, the Mathematica profession joined forces in order to resolve this, and the intellectual leader, but also the children leader was this man, David Hilbert, who was the greatest mathematician at that time, but also a force of nature. His battle cry was, we must know,

we shall know, there are no unsolvable problems. And 20 years after the Principia disaster strike, this young man in his late 20s then, Kurt Göder, in Vienna, proved an incredible theorem, something that essentially proved that no matter how many volumes on Frequipia write, no matter how sophisticated our systems become, no matter how clever our reasoning methods become, there are always going to be mathematical truths, theorems that are true, but, however, have not proved. So, this put an end to the foundation in the worst possible way, in the foundation of course. And this, in some sense, is the darkest moment of the story, except that, as it happens, usually in thrillers, the darkest moment is also the beginning of the eventual salvation. So, because what happened five years after Göder, this man among many others, contemporaries of his, tried to sharpen even further the

negative message of Göder, and to sharpen the following direction, that okay, there are theorems that have not proved. But let's look at theorems that do have proofs. Can we at least, those proofs? Can we generate them mechanically, automatically? Okay, is the possible to have a machine that does this prove, that generates this proofs? And roughly. And he set out to prove that this is impossible, but then he found himself in an interesting position, that in order to prove that there can't be no machine that does something, he had to invent what a machine is, he had to carefully define what is a machine. And his definition of machine, which is one of the loose of definitions of machines that were happening exactly this month, those months, was by far the most influential, and because it had sort of, you know, it was in some sense, I mean, I think the reason it was very influential is because if you allow the adjective, because it was very graphic, okay, so you could almost see it, okay? And also, it had the gift of the property of universality, okay? Universal

basically means something simple. It means, in some sense, it presages software, okay? It basically says that you don't need to have a separate machine for doing calculations, the separate machine for building bridges, the separate machine for ballads, you know, in a book a separate machine for writing letters or emails, but you can have the same machine, the same laptop, and the software will do the various jobs, okay? This was, it is now a very obvious idea, but it is the fact that it's obvious is a tribute to doing, okay? And without this, I mean, in the beginning I said that the roots of the internet, okay? So I was not trying to be sort of just superficially geeky, okay? The point is that I think that the roots of the internet, the following sense, okay? So, I love, I'm not stating, you know, it's sort of a social argument, that television was invented in 1900, okay? So, but for

five decay, there was nobody on the set, because there was nothing to see, and there is nothing to see, because nobody on the set, so you could not produce content. So, the point is that when the internet dies, okay, then what happened is that there were 20 million computers in the desks of people, okay? Professional computers. And these computers were universal, and this means that it could also, among many other things, click, okay? So, and then by clicking, everybody started clicking and suddenly the internet sprung in math, okay? So that's so, in some sense, I think the universality gives you was, was, was, you know, whether it would be the universality without touring is another idea, is another question, but of course it would be, but who knows what delay? And then 10 years, and the world war later, for Neumann created at last this machine, which is probably a million times slower and a

million times more expensive than your laptop. So, I think this is an incredible, incredibly interesting story, okay? Because of the impact on our lives today, and on its intellectual grandeur, but the truth is why I'm attracted to the story. So, it's sort of, you know, the human aspect of it, which is just beyond belief, beyond belief tragic. So, and I have here the main protagonist among, I have added Emil Post, a very tragic figure. He was, he was, he was the school teacher in New York most of his life. He, a very ingenious mathematician, he proved the theorems that essentially did what Gendel and Turing did years later, but about, about, about, about, out of cure, in, in security he kept them in his drawer. And

he was manic depressive, and, and he, he actually died in the hands of his doctor during electroshock treatment. So, Kantor, on the upper right, Kantor was in and out of mental clinics with, with severe melancholia for most of his life, and he died in, in Asylum. Gendel, on the far right, who has been called the greatest physician since Aristotle, was died of malnutrition in his 70s, he refused food out of paranoid fear that was being poisoned. So even paragons of sanity like Bertrand Russell and Hildbert, Russell lived with constant fear of madness through his life, and Hildbert, like Russell, had schizofrenics on. So, they, they all had amazing brushes with, with, with, with insanity. So, Frege was perfectly

sane, except that in the last years of his life, he wrote rabid anti-chimetic treatises, which was considered completely sane in Germany, that, that period. And, and, and Vittgenstein, I mean, you know, Vittgenstein, I could, I could talk, I mean, you know, listen, I mean, if, if, if, if we had invented, you know, if we were invented the character like Vittgenstein, I mean, you know, every critic would booer, okay, you know, because, you know, he, I don't, you know, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, you know, Hildbert, uh, uh, uh, so, so, okay, once, Russell was awakened at 3 a.m. by Vittgenstein, uh, and, and, uh, to, to, to cry if I find philosophical point, and, and Russell told him, listen, uh, you know, don't be so intense, okay, you are going to go crazy. And, and, and, uh, Vittgenstein slammed the door, saying, uh, God delivered me from sanity, uh, at which, at which point Russell murmured to himself, uh, God certainly will, okay, so, uh, so, um, uh, and, but of course, the most, the most

tragic of all of, of this story is that of Alan Turing, who, whose death is, no, was not due to, uh, to, to, to madness, but, uh, but, uh, to the madness of his environment, to the criminal bigotry of the laws of England, he was, he was condemned to, uh, because of his homosexuality, which was illegal, and, uh, he was condemned essentially to, to hormone treatment, which led into suicide two years later. Okay, so this is, this is our, our, uh, uh, uh, this is a subject of the book of logic comics. Okay, so, uh, uh, uh, so I should tell you one, you know, this is Bertrand Russell, uh, in his service, okay, who is, who is, uh, uh, keeping the dominos, uh, he's, uh, I should tell you this, I mean, it's not a biography of Russell, it's not meant to be a biography of Russell, okay, even more, it's not to be any, any kind of introduction to logic,

okay, several people told me, I have understood things written in this book that I never thought I would, and, and this makes me glad, but it's really completely unintended, okay, so the, the, the, you know, I mean, I, I, I didn't, I didn't write this book to teach anybody, I mean, it's certainly a puzzle that's been known, okay, so the, uh, the, uh, frankly, there is too much education in my life, okay, so, you know, I've, I've spent 40 years in universities, okay, so that's it. So, uh, when I, you know, I just wanted to write a very interesting fascinating, gripping, uh, uh, uh, made up story, okay, so, and, and that, that, that's, that's what logic comics is, and, and, uh, apostolosis is even more, more, uh, explicit about this point, okay, so, uh, so it's definitely, uh, uh, not, you know, so you have to explain a little logical, a little, in the following sense, that if this was an erotic, uh, novel, okay, erotic fiction, then, uh, sort of, uh, uh, novel about erotic obsession, you would have to speak about the, the beauty of, of the

beloved or the absence there, okay, so, because otherwise, it's, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the left in the dark, okay, so, uh, hanging, so, so, in this sense, we have to explain some logic, but only in this sense, really, okay, so, uh, okay, so, um, uh, uh, without further ado, uh, so this is part of the Mastic Troma that was Russell's childhood, okay, so, um, and, and, uh, here is Russell discovering Ukraine. Uh, you see, you see, you see, you know, so incidentally, it's our, our, our publisher, the same publishers who, uh, brought you Harry Potter, okay, so, um, so, you know, frankly, we did have, uh, dreams of Harry Potter, though, okay, the reason is that, that, that, that, that, that our story is also about the, uh, the British orphan kid who discovered magic in, uh, early adolescence, okay, but, uh, all right, so the magic here, of course, is the, the, the magic of the promise of certainty that one finds in mathematics. Uh, then he goes on to

college and flirts with his wife, but also does very serious work with a white tie. Uh, then, uh, he takes trips, uh, to meet the Frege and later, uh, in another town to meet Kantor, these trips, by the way, never happened, uh, even though, uh, even though, uh, he did spend time in Berlin, uh, with his wife, but, uh, uh, uh, no, so, uh, last Monday, there was, there was an event at the factory, uh, about biological comics and, uh, and there was a talk by, uh, by, uh, a philosopher, uh, Paolo Mancoso. And, uh, so, you know, he, he liked the book, but he's also just tied that for, uh, departures from, uh, truth, okay, so, uh, so, and, uh, I, congratulations, you know, I was really amazed by his scholarship, you know, but I told him, Paolo, that's a made up story, okay, so, you know, so, so we, uh, uh, I told him, Mark Kanton, you never, never spoke in Caesar's funeral, okay, so, you know, but, but, but, but you all know that it was a full note, too, okay, so, so, uh,

uh, uh, uh, and frankly, sort of, you know, if we had, you know, if there was ever a conflict between, uh, character and plot and, uh, and, uh, and, uh, historical truth, of course you would like to have this, okay, but the point is that, uh, the story is so, so incredibly involved and tragic and gripping by itself that we didn't have to, we didn't have to do, we didn't have to lie much, okay, so, uh, uh, so this is Hilbert, this is Russell watching Hilbert, but delivered his, uh, 1900 address, uh, this is, uh, uh, this is Russell and, and, and, and, and Whitehead deciding to do the Principia Mathematica, uh, this is, uh, uh, this is Russell, uh, flirting with Whitehead's wife, um, incidentally, the selected few of you who, who, uh, have read my sense novel, uh, uh, must be wondering, you know, if there is a lot of sight in logic comics, okay, so, uh, so, uh, sadly, the only explicit, uh, sexual thing that, that I could get past my, uh,

my, my, uh, to the time itself, uh, if the writer on the bottom, if he's involved, if he involves two small animals, okay, so, uh, okay, so, um, this is again, uh, this again, uh, uh, Russell flirting with, uh, with Whitehead's wife, this is Wittgenstein, so, the advent of Wittgenstein, uh, this is Wittgenstein at war, you know, this man, sort of, you know, another, you know, he, he discovered the truth during his suicide admissions, uh, in the first world war, he discovered his, uh, his deep inside, right here, so, you know, the meaning of this world does not reside in the world, uh, and, and, uh, he actually, uh, he wrote his, his, uh, uh, great book, Tractatus Logic of Geozoficus in an Italian, uh, Prisoner's Camp, so the Italian saved him by, from his suicidal, uh, courage by capturing him, okay, so, uh, this is Wittgenstein's knowing, uh,

Russell with his newfound theory of language, this is Gedel announcing, uh, his discovery, all this while Nazism is rising throughout Europe, uh, of course we have, uh, so this is the story, the framing story is, is Bertrand Russell giving a lecture, uh, at, uh, a named, uh, United, uh, American University, and though, it looks very much like Berkeley, so, you know, I, uh, uh, I tricked the artists in this direction, so, um, uh, uh, and, uh, uh, so the idea is that it's, it's the eve of the Second World War, protesters tried to get me on the side to agree that the United States should not enter the Second World War, and last I tell them, this is important decision, it needs logic, let me tell you about logic, okay, so, and he, and that's, that's sort of the story, uh, one lecture, uh, there is a second frame in Arabic, which, uh, we, uh, we, uh, uh, we, uh,

appear, uh, so we are debating back and forth, uh, uh, uh, uh, fine points, uh, that's, uh, uh, Apostolos with Blue, uh, Alekos, uh, the sketcher with the red, uh, uh, this character, we know, with the yellow that, you know, the, you know, you know, I love the art except for the character here, okay, so, and I need you to know how does colors and, and the research and lettering, so, so, uh, uh, incidentally, I mean, all of this is fiction also, in the following sense, that, uh, we have many arguments of the form, listen, this is the line, okay, my character is not telling this, okay, so, but, but, uh, but, uh, and we both lost some of these battles, okay, so, so what I'm saying, I guess, don't believe everything you read, right, so, uh, and we have, we have, uh, we are lost in Athens, in modern Athens, at some point, and of course, the, uh, it ends, uh, where all story should end, which is an ancient Greek theater at the finale of the

Eurostea, okay, so, if you want to put conveyance, because it really is a novel, and the characters are developed, and, but it's more than a novel, it's a novel in which, um, in which the narrator appears, and I don't mean Russell for the moment, um, although I think the, the, the, whether the narrator is Russell or a puppet to meet you, I think you sometimes, uh, lose track a little bit, um, so, so let me, let me, let me just, uh, start with a, um, you know, a simple question about the book itself, then I'm going to ask you a question about logic, and then I think I'm going to ask you a question about emotions, okay, so, so, and then we'll turn to the audience, and we'll get some questions from the audience, so the question about the book itself is, uh, everybody who reads this is going to want to go right one themselves, and they're going to be all mad, even though those of us who've written books already, that we didn't have the idea of writing one of these, uh, you know, graphic novels, uh, uh, themselves, so, so tell us, tell us what advice you would give to all the people who have the inspiration that instead of doing whatever kind of writing they might do, uh, or have done, uh, this is what they want to do now.

So, I, I discovered it's a tricky business, in the sense that, uh, probably more than half of the graphic novels you see around, uh, written and illustrated by the same, by the same person, sort of, an artist who also is a, is a story, a story teller. Uh, so, we were very, very lucky, you know, it was, uh, two of us who wanted to write this, and we found a great team of artists. So, this, uh, this will be hard to, this will be very hard, this model is very hard to duplicate, sort of, you know, there is, it has happened before, it has happened before. You know, especially, uh, this, you know, I should tell you, this took us eight years, okay, you know, we started, you know, it first, we first conceived project eight and a half years ago. We started seriously working on it five and a half years ago, uh, you know, before that we were doing sketches and so on.

You know, but, but it's, uh, I, okay, I, I wish a lot of people that replicated, you know, but, uh, but it's, uh, but it's, it's a tricky business. For example, sort of, you know, in the end of the book, we say, uh, but, you know, we sort of promised that there's going to be a sequel. Frankly, I mean, I don't have ideas for anything. I, you know, so, sort of, you know, if I knew that it would be eight years, I wouldn't stop it. Okay, so, you know, I'm glad I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful, it's a, it's a, it's a beautifully done book. It's, you know, the, the printing quality is very high. The graphics are wonderful. The, the, the, you know, I particularly enjoyed these, um, landscapes of, uh, of Athens and, uh, and Berkeley and so on. Those are, they're, they're really, they're wonderful. Okay. Now, um, my reading, um, very suddenly, the graphic novel thing, I mean, you know, everybody asks us, what were you smoking the day that you decided to do as a graphic novel?

You know, it was a possible idea. You know, I, I thought it was a theory. I thought it was crazy. I laughed. Then I cried. Then I laughed again. But then I realized it was, it was a reasonable idea in the sense. I mean, so if I, if I can, if I can interject twenty seconds, I mean, no, uh, in the sense that this is historical novel, if you think about it. Okay. So, in a historical novel, a lot of novelistic energy is goals into, into sort of, uh, capturing the texture of the era. So, you know, the, the atmosphere. And in a graphic novel, you just open the pages and you have it. Okay. So, so that, that's a great advantage. Okay. Okay. Logic. Um, my sense is that, uh, that, that, that, that, that, that, the sense that you get from, that I got from reading this is, uh, your profound respect for Russell. So Russell is, he gets more airtime than anybody else in the book because the, the, the next to superficial frame, the superficial frame is the author's writing the book. And then the, the next frame is Russell giving, uh, this talk. And then the various events in history of logic happened through the eyes of, you know, eyes of, eyes of Russell.

Um, uh, you know, Russell's, you know, as you point out his actual contributions to, to, to logic in the long frame. I mean, it was, somebody needed to do it. And we're all glad that he spent 10 years of his life doing it. And, uh, we like he, we're, we're glad to put it behind him and move on to move on to something else. It can shine on the other hand, you know, and I, I'm going to invite you to say a little bit more about him. Um, because I mean, picture shine is, of course, is it, you know, an amazing character, not explicitly mad as my, members of his family are. But full of such passion of intensity, as many, you know, as many of the others, Russell is temporarily and, you know, all of the, you know, these great mathematical thinkers have been when they are struggling with something really hard. Victor Stein, you know, lived whole years of his life, you know, on this, you know, on the, on the edge of this intensity. Um, but Victor Stein is the one guy that you actually take a slap at, you pop it in the book where you say that, uh,

Tractatus logical philosophical is, uh, on your top 10 list of most overrated books ever written. And, and so you got, you got, you can't just, you know, now that we've got you here on the state, everybody else, you know, you, you kind of let Russell say something or you, you know, you draw them the way they're drawn here with little spirals coming out of their eyes or something like that. But this is the one case where, where, where Chris, those popular reviews says, you know, this is one of the worst books ever written. Um, okay. So, uh, so how do you, how do you, you know, we got Russell on the one hand and Victor Stein and the other? I will answer about Russell first. Okay. When, when I told, you know, great philosopher friend in Greece, you know, I told him, you know, two years into the project, you know, I'm writing about Russell. He told me, give yourself a favor. Don't read his autobiography. It was too late. Okay. You know, the, you know, you're absolutely right. The man writes, writes like the devil. Okay. So, you know, so, so he, he really wraps you around his pen. I mean, he, he makes you believe anything he wants.

So, I mean, he's Nobel Prize in Literature. You know, so he's, he's, he's incredible. And, and, and it's very difficult not to be sympathetic. Even though he's a real biographer monk. So, you know, comes out, you know, he confesses somewhere that comes out with a great antipathy for, for us. But, I mean, I, I, I was, I was completely charmed by, by, by, you know, you're right. I mean, also, Victor Stein. Okay. So, especially the incident, I, you know, I have the perfect answer. Okay. Listen. I'm a professional liar. I'm a Nobelist. I mean, also, so, so, so, so, you know, so this particular, this particular thing was one of the things that, that I thought to the post office that we shouldn't be there. I mean, you know, I don't want to say it. Okay. Because I don't believe it. Okay. So actually, Tractatological Philosophicals is, you know, you know, is, is, is the proof of Victor Stein's ingenuity. Okay. As far as I can tell, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not an expert. You know, so we, Tractatological Philosophicals, I think, is, is a super piece of work. Okay. So, you know, and it's, it's groundbreaking. It's, it's, it's, it's witness of genius. It's, it's, it's daring, very curious and all that. I mean, also, you know, I have much less patience.

And the respect for the late victim's time. Okay. Not be, not being, not being, not being a, especially sort of, you know, frankly, I have, I have read, he, I have read his later, later writings about mathematics. Okay. Which I find, you know, how can I say it? I mean, I, I looked very hard. I mean, not like a true Victor Stein school that I looked very hard, but I could not find something which is clever. Okay. So, you know, frankly. Okay. So, so, I mean, there is, in fact, there are some notes where he has a dialogue with touring. And it's like sort of, you know, night and day. So, this, okay. So, I think the simple answer to the question is blame the co-op. Right? Okay. So, okay. So, so finally, I want to hit on this, this theme of the, of the, the, the, the edge between madness and sanity. And you know, which is, which is so beautifully developed through the, I mean, there are characters that are just mad.

And then, and all the, although as you say, not only, not always in forms of madness that were necessarily recognized, but so the, this group, either themselves are in their families. There's, there's plenty of insanity. And there's also these, all of these characters who are, you know, what I referred to as, you know, full of passion of the intensity. And where, where, you know, they themselves and everybody else must, you know, wonder how long they can keep it up before losing all sense of the, you know, the real world. And that's one of the themes of the book about the, the real world and its representation and so on. You, you end up with the Oristea and you have the, the demonization of the furies as the closure of the, of the, of the book, which is, you know, a lovely way of, you know, relieving the fear of madness and of our, on being under the control of mad men and mad women. Okay. But just before then, there's this scene with Papa Dimitriou again, where he is trapped in a, you know, horrible episode of lack of control that's not of his own creation.

He's why he's in, he's trying to find the way back to his school in Athens. And he's set upon by people who steal from him and fool him and there's threats of violence and some actual violence. What's that scene about? Where did that come from? Good question. You know, so there was, there was, there were a lot of relightings of the basic script. But this is, this is this, this survive. Okay. Some reason, a lot of things came and went, but, but this contract, this sort of interlude between survived. I don't know why. So, you know, it's, it's, you know, who apostolosis, my quarter is, is Greek, who lives in Greece, I'm a Greek of the Espera.

We both have, have fond, fondness in our hearts for the Athens that, that is no longer. And, and this, this contrast between, what, what, you know, the ways, the ways some parts of Athens look now and what you remember. So, you know, made us, made us think. I mean, and I, if you remember, what comes out of that is some kind of, of, of a reflection about, about insanity. So, you know, because we are all making abstractions in our lives. And, and, because that's how we work, that's how we function as human beings, as social beings, as thinkers. And, there is, there is one, one particular weakness that, that a lot of us have to confuse the abstraction that actually reality, which abstract.

And, and so, to put it otherwise, to confuse real lives, real life with the map, maps of life. And, and so, this was sort of the metaphor that, that drove this, this silly episode. Okay, so, let's, let's, let's, before I turn to the audience, but, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll try to raise the, the level of levity slightly. So, you know, say, there, there is some ultimate truth in the whole storyline, whether the factual details are accurate enough. But, I really do want to know, was Whitehead's wife, young blonde and pretty. Yes, yes, yes, yes. She was, she was, she was, she was, I wish, yes, I wish, everything. Yes, yes, yes.

She's very, she's very commonly in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was, she was. Oh, so I'll tell you, I was the newcomer in the comic business. My three authors, you know, two of them were professional artists doing comics and moving, and animation, all their lives. And Apostolo was, was a great fan of comics. Okay, so I was the last, you know, the, the, the, the, the part that, that resisted the idea. And when we decided to do it, when I saw the, sort of, the, the reason in their madness, I, I, I, they actually gave me a list of two dozen comic books that I, you know, I had only read mouse. Okay, so I was completely ignorant. Right, so, so I, they gave me a list of, you know, I spent a summer reading, reading the world's greatest. And of course, Eisner and certainly McLeod. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah. But I mean, for example, Larry Gonic was also in the list, you know, we know.

So, probably just, you know, I'll be delighted to tell you more, more, more afterwards, but I can tell you now that we've postdoc, brilliant postdoc at Berkeley, the name that they live not Princeton PhD. So, we are, we have some ideas about essentially the role of sex in evolution and how it, it affects what we, what you understand as genes and genetic hierarchy. So, I'll be delighted to tell you more. I'm reminded that I should be paraphrasing the questions since the recording won't pick them up. So, the question is, were you at all influenced or thinking about the playing Copenhagen, which is another scientific drama, put it in a, in a dramatic form? I believe that I have never seen Copenhagen, but I have read the book. And, and I loved it. I believe that it was, I read it quite a bit after we had, we had formulated logicomics.

I'm not sure if I, if either I were opposed to those who probably had read it before me, have been influenced in a writing, I can really cannot tell. I mean, you know, it is, it is one of the, of the books that is are inside me, you know, so that I remember. What was the reason you decided to tell the story in comic form? So, the one, you know, the one reason which I realized, you know, a rationalized exposed is the one I told you about the historical, the historical atmosphere. You know, as I was thinking about the story, I realized that it is, you know, you know, with the, with the proposal to do it in, in comic form, in hand. I realized that it was sort of a dark, atmospheric, lots of Europe, first world war and interbellum. And, that, if you think about it, sort of, you know, this is, this is perfect, you know, this is perfect, I mean, you know, great comic books, I mean, you know, like, I think Batman, okay.

So, you know, they create a dark, dark atmosphere, sort of, you know, you know, you know, for, for them to work. So, and I was convinced that this is, this is, this is, and also, this is, this is, frankly, excessively tragic story, okay. So, so, so that, you know, I think I think that I really think that, that, that, that the comic form lighting is not as, as it can. The question has to do with the, I'm not sure I can paraphrase it perfectly. I'll let you repeat the question. I'll let you answer whatever question you want to answer. So, the, so the question, I understand the question. There is mathematics, you know, we all know it's not inevitable. The sense that there are thousands of mathematicians sitting every morning on the desk.

So, you know, there are many, many, many directions to explore and they choose some, okay. So, so I believe that, I believe that, that there is a lot of personality in our scientific choices. I believe that, that there is, we, we choose, you know, we choose things that speak to our fears and obsessions. I, you know, for example, I mean, you know, I mean, you know, that this is, this is the way in which I understand sort of, you know, the, the connection between, between, between, madness and science, sort of, you know, that, that, that, that if you are a brilliant adolescent about to choose your scientific career and you think that there is, you know, you have a fear of madness or you have the reasons to believe that there is something terrible happening upstairs. Probably sort of, you know, you are going, you know, this is going to influence your choice, okay. And you, you may, you may turn to the field that promises more certainty stability.

And frankly, in the first half of the 20th century, that was, that must have been logic. Thank you. It's a, it's, you know, it's a, it's a very interesting work. I, I, there was a wonderful paper written a few years ago. It's called something like mathematics on Mars or mathematics on an alien planet. And they said, what, which parts of mathematics as we have them would exist if in a intelligence society that had developed completely independent of ours. And, you know, Boolean logic would have evolved. I'm think, read ramified type theory would not have, you know, that wouldn't be only something that would not exist. And that's why the frink it is. Thank you so much. There are books for sale in the back. There is an author eager to sign them. And let's all give Chris us the thanks.

Thank you very much.