----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Hanly" <khanly at mb.sympatico.ca> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 11:11 AM Subject: Re: Hitchens responds to critics
> Russell was talking about thinking about the foundations of
mathematics
> wasnt he? When I was a teenager I often thought about nothing but
sex all
> day long. I thought perhaps I was a pervert. I am relieved to find
out I
> was actually a great thinker...
>
> Cheers, Ken Hanly
>
============
"I made a practice of wandering about the common every night from eleven till one, by which means I came to know the different noises made by nightjars. [Most people know only one.] I was trying hard to solve the contradictions [of the set theoretical paradoxes]. Every morning I would sit down before a blank sheet of paper. Throughout the day, with a brief interval for lunch, I would stare at the blank sheet. Often when evening came it was still empty...It was clear to me that I could not get on without solving the contradictions, and I was determined that no difficulty should turn me aside from the completion of Principia Mathematica, but it seemed quite likely that the whole of the rest of my life might be consumed in looking at that blank sheet of paper. What made it the more annoying was that the contradictions were trivial, and that my time was spent in matters that seemed unworthy of serious attention. [BR: Autobiography, the Early Years]
Some scholars suggest that it was the Islamic philosopher Averroes who laid down the challenge of holding two contradictory thoughts together, although Buddha and some of the early Indian logicians may have even been onto the challenge before him, suggesting that the law of non-contradiction can't always hold.
Ian