Actually, I think Dana understates the problem with this program. It suffers from what I call the "PBS documentary syndrome" (equally afflicting the BBC, however, so the name is not universal enough!): it repeatedly tells you what's cool about its topic, without ever actually telling you what the topic really is. Afraid to scare viewers away with the actual details of the topic, it just talks about it in terms so general (and often over-inflated or sensationalized, which was Dana's point) they are really quite meaningless. Though not perfect by any means, I think a recent 4-part series "The Story of Maths" narrated by Marcus du Sautoy does better - he even tries to sketch some proofs. (The episode closest to "Dangerous Knowledge" would be the fourth.) Even better is an old series (but still to be found on Youtube!) called Mathematical Mystery Tour. But generally, science documentaries are disappointing, and maths ones even more so. It's a pity, because you actually can get an audience of non-specialists to understand (at least a little) what mathematical results etc are about. I teach an honours Liberal Arts maths & logic class, and a surprisingly large percentage can actually appreciate the beauty of (eg) natural deduction proofs in predicate logic, basic theory of natural numbers (infinitude of primes, irrationality of primes, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, ... ), simple axiomatics (we do Boolean algebras as an example), and even Godel's theorems, and the "Lambek calculus" for linguistics (even a bit of category theory there!). This isn't a mickey mouse course (sample class tests available on request!), and it's a challenge to many of the students. The point is: they are willing to make the effort if they know you're not being condescending, and that you are giving them "the real thing", not some pablum that only looks good in the box. I wish more TV documentary producers took that attitude - they might get a slightly smaller audience, but their audience will appreciate their efforts more. -= rags =- On Mon, 30 Nov 2009, Dana Scott wrote:
I think the premise of the work is silly. I knew Gödel personally and many people who knew him. My long-time friend Robin Gandy was a close friend and associate of Turing. I think it is true that Godel was very frustrated by not being able to settle the status of the Continuum Hypothesis, but to say that his mathematics drove him mad is terrible pop psychology. In the case of Turing, the matter is even less clear. For him, persecution may have been a big factor in his suicide -- which also could have been an accident. Gödel did suffer from paranoia, and Cantor was oppressed by religious questions, which he did relate to his theories of the infinite. But to conclude cause and effect seems pretty hard to prove. And what is the point?
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