Book review:The Pattern in the Carpet
(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-29 09:48
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By Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou, illustrated by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna, published by Bloomsbury
Well, this is unexpected - a comic book about the quest for logical certainty in mathematics. The story spans the decades from the late 19th century to World War II, a period when the nature of mathematical truth was being furiously debated.
The stellar cast, headed up by Bertrand Russell, includes the greatest philosophers, logicians and mathematicians of the era, along with sundry wives and mistresses, plus a couple of homicidal maniacs, an apocryphal barber and Adolf Hitler. Improbable material for comic-book treatment? Not really. The principals in this intellectual drama are superheroes of a sort. They go up against a powerful nemesis, who might be called Dark Antinomy. Each is haunted by an inner demon, the Specter of Madness. Their quest has a tragic arc, not unlike that of Superman or Donald Duck.
