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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Musil, scientist and artist
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From Robert Musil's "The Mathematical Man" 1913:


"...The mathematician endures this scandal [of working for no immediate
useful end, and of discovering that physics has fundamental problems]
in exemplary fashion, that is with confidence and pride in the devlish
riskiness of his intellect.  I could adduce still other examples, for
instance when mathematical physicists were suddenly wildly bent on
denying the existence of space and time.  But they did not do this in a
dreamy haze, the way philosophers sometimes do (which everyone
immediately excuses by saying: Look at their profession), but with
reasons that rose up before us quite suddenly as palpably as an
automobile, and became terribly credible.  This is enough to show what
sort of fellows these are.
"After the Enlightenment the rest of us lost our courage.  A minor
failure was enough to turn us away from reason, and we allow every
barren enthusiast to inveigh against the intentions of a d'Alembert or
a Diderot as mere rationalism.  We beat the drums for feeling against
intellect and forget that without intellect - apart from exceptional
cases - feeling is as dense as a blockhead.  In this way we have ruined
our imaginative literature to such an extent that, whenever one reads
two German novels in a row, one must solve an integral equation to grow
lean again.
"Let no one object that outside their field mathematicians have banal
or silly minds, or that they themselves are the ones who have left
their logic in the lurch.  Here it is none of their business, but in
their field they do what we ought to be doing in ours.  Therein lies
the significant lesson and model of their existence; they are an
analogy for the intellectual of the future.
"If something of this seriousness shines through the playfulness I have
been directing at the nature of methematics, I hope these concluding
remarks will not seem unexpected. . . . even if our contemporaries have
no idea how to transfer their intellectual level to the level on which
they live, they still have some idea of what is beneath their notice."


David
"It is interesting to note that the death penalty for individuals is
less controversial than the mere suggestion that a few corporations may
have forfeited their right to exist.  How many people does a company
have to harm before we question if it ought to exist?" Paul Hawken
