@jbcrail@mastodon.social avatar

jbcrail

@jbcrail@mastodon.social

anti-fascist, numberwanger and tölu-völva (tölva), punctuated discursiveness, "doesn't conform" 🏳️‍🌈

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. For a complete list of posts, browse on the original instance.

futurebird , to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Does anyone know of a good book or biography of Cantor? I've always found the way his struggles with mental illness were discussed to be a little ... flip.

"He thought about infinity too much and went CRAZY"

It's reductive, and plays into the mystique and fear-mongering around mathematics. (That acts as a kind of gatekeeping and is bad.) While stigmatizing and abstracting mental illness.

1/

jbcrail ,
@jbcrail@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird As a neurodivergent with a mathematics background and side interests in mathematics' intersection with philosophy and history, Cantor has always fascinated me. Inspired by your post, I found an excellent biographical paper, "Towards a biography of Georg Cantor" (1971), covering his life, work, and mental illness in a sensitive yet balanced way:

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/00033797100203837

jbcrail ,
@jbcrail@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird Summary from the paper: "The great influence of Georg Cantor's theory of sets and transfinite arithmetic has led to a considerable interest in his life. It is well known that he had a remarkable and unusual personality, and that he suffered from attacks of mental illness; but the 'popular'' account of his life is richer in falsehood and distortion than in factual content."

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •