Logicomix
Encyclopedia
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth is a graphic novel
about the foundational quest in mathematics, written by Apostolos Doxiadis
, author of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture
, and theoretical computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou
of the University of California, Berkeley. Character design and artwork are by Alecos Papadatos and color is by Annie Di Donna. The book was originally written in English, and was translated into Greek by author Apostolos Doxiadis for the release in Greece, which preceded the US and UK releases.
Logicomix intertwines the philosophical struggles with the characters' own personal turmoil. These are in turn played out just upstage of the momentous historical events of the era and the ideological battles which gave rise to them. The narrator of the story is Bertrand Russell
, who stands as an icon of many of these themes: a deeply sensitive and introspective man, Russell was not just a philosopher and pacifist, he was also one of the prominent figures in the foundational quest. Russell's life story, depicted by Logicomix, is itself a journey through the goals and struggles, and triumph and tragedy shared by many great thinkers of the 20th century: Georg Cantor
, Ludwig Wittgenstein
, G. E. Moore, Alfred North Whitehead
, David Hilbert
, Gottlob Frege
, Henri Poincaré
, Kurt Gödel
, and Alan Turing
.
A parallel tale, set in present-day Athens
, records the creators’ disagreement on the meaning of the story, thus setting in relief the foundational quest as a quintessentially modern adventure. It is on the one hand a tragedy of the hubris of rationalism, which depends inextricably on madness, and on the other an origin myth of the computer.
reviewed the book for the New York Times and says that the story "is presented with real graphic verve. (Even though I’m a text guy, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the witty drawings.)" although he does note "one serious misstep" involving the overplaying of the impact Russell's paradox
had on mathematics. A review at The Guardian
said that the "authors tell the story with a humour and lightness of touch that pokes fun at the philosophers and mathematicians involved, but never trivialises the philosophy or the mathematics" concluding that "Doxiadis has shown that by using fiction to provide an emotional context to mathematical discoveries it can make for a gripping read. Uncle Petros was a bestseller and the much more ambitious Logicomix deserves to be one too."
The book was recommended by the New Statesman
in late September. On October 2 the book made the New York Times, Sunday Book Review, Editor's Choice list and the next week it was #1 on the NYT Graphic Novel Best Seller list. The book sold out on the day it was released in the United States and United Kingdom, and also got into the Top 10 on Amazon.com
and Amazon.co.uk, leading the manager of a major Athens
bookstore to say "No Greek book has sold abroad like this in 30 years."
Logicomix also became an instant bestseller in Greece and the Netherlands.
However, the global judgemente by Mancosu is positive:
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...
about the foundational quest in mathematics, written by Apostolos Doxiadis
Apostolos Doxiadis
Apostolos Doxiadis is a Greek writer.Since his early years Doxiadis was drawn to mathematics and at the age of 15 he entered Columbia University in New York City to study maths...
, author of Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture is a 1992 novel by Greek author Apostolos Doxiadis.It concerns a young man's interaction with his reclusive uncle, who sought to prove that any even number greater than two is the sum of two primes, which is a famous unsolved mathematics problem called...
, and theoretical computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou
Christos Papadimitriou
Christos Harilaos Papadimitriou is a Professor in the Computer Science Division at the University of California, Berkeley, United States...
of the University of California, Berkeley. Character design and artwork are by Alecos Papadatos and color is by Annie Di Donna. The book was originally written in English, and was translated into Greek by author Apostolos Doxiadis for the release in Greece, which preceded the US and UK releases.
Plot
Set between the late 19th century and present-day, the graphic novel Logicomix is based on the story of the so-called "foundational quest" in mathematics.Logicomix intertwines the philosophical struggles with the characters' own personal turmoil. These are in turn played out just upstage of the momentous historical events of the era and the ideological battles which gave rise to them. The narrator of the story is Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, who stands as an icon of many of these themes: a deeply sensitive and introspective man, Russell was not just a philosopher and pacifist, he was also one of the prominent figures in the foundational quest. Russell's life story, depicted by Logicomix, is itself a journey through the goals and struggles, and triumph and tragedy shared by many great thinkers of the 20th century: Georg Cantor
Georg Cantor
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a German mathematician, best known as the inventor of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets,...
, Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
, G. E. Moore, Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS was an English mathematician who became a philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education...
, David Hilbert
David Hilbert
David Hilbert was a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of...
, Gottlob Frege
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
, Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and a philosopher of science...
, Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...
, and Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
.
A parallel tale, set in present-day Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
, records the creators’ disagreement on the meaning of the story, thus setting in relief the foundational quest as a quintessentially modern adventure. It is on the one hand a tragedy of the hubris of rationalism, which depends inextricably on madness, and on the other an origin myth of the computer.
Releases
In chronological order:- Greece – October 20, 2008, Ikaros Publications, ISBN 978-960-8399-67-9
- Netherlands – August 15, 2009, De Vliegende Hollander (The Flying Dutchman), ISBN 9789049500795
- United Kingdom – September 7, 2009, Bloomsbury, ISBN 0747597200
- United States – September 29, 2009, Bloomsbury USA, ISBN 1596914521
- France – May 10, 2010, Vuibert, ISBN 978-2711743513
- Italy – June 10, 2010, Guanda, ISBN 978-8860881687
- Germany – August 30, 2010, Atrium-Verlag, ISBN 978-3855350698
- Finland – September 10, 2010, Avain, ISBN 978-951-692-786-5
- Spain (Logicomix. Una búsqueda épica de la verdad) – March 24, 2011, Ediciones Sins Entido, ISBN 978-84-96722-74-3
Reception
Jim HoltJim Holt
Jim L. Holt , is a Baptist minister and a conservative Republican politician from Springdale in northwestern Arkansas.-Background:...
reviewed the book for the New York Times and says that the story "is presented with real graphic verve. (Even though I’m a text guy, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the witty drawings.)" although he does note "one serious misstep" involving the overplaying of the impact Russell's paradox
Russell's paradox
In the foundations of mathematics, Russell's paradox , discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1901, showed that the naive set theory created by Georg Cantor leads to a contradiction...
had on mathematics. A review at The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
said that the "authors tell the story with a humour and lightness of touch that pokes fun at the philosophers and mathematicians involved, but never trivialises the philosophy or the mathematics" concluding that "Doxiadis has shown that by using fiction to provide an emotional context to mathematical discoveries it can make for a gripping read. Uncle Petros was a bestseller and the much more ambitious Logicomix deserves to be one too."
The book was recommended by the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
in late September. On October 2 the book made the New York Times, Sunday Book Review, Editor's Choice list and the next week it was #1 on the NYT Graphic Novel Best Seller list. The book sold out on the day it was released in the United States and United Kingdom, and also got into the Top 10 on Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
and Amazon.co.uk, leading the manager of a major Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
bookstore to say "No Greek book has sold abroad like this in 30 years."
Logicomix also became an instant bestseller in Greece and the Netherlands.
Historical accuracy
According to Paolo Mancosu, the authors admittely take liberties with the real course of events, for example with reference to the alleged meetings Russell would have had with Frege and Cantor. Although such departures from reality can be fruitful for narrative purposes, according to Mancosu, in some cases they are objectionable, as the portrayal of Frege as a rabid paranoid antisemit, and the constant refrain of the alleged causal link between logic and madness. From the conceptual point of view, some of the major ideas about the foundation of mathematics are conveyed with reasonable accuracy, although sometimes errors, mistakes and inaccuracies occur.However, the global judgemente by Mancosu is positive:
External links
- Unusual Greek math comic tops bestseller lists worldwide, Deutsche WelleDeutsche WelleDeutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
, October 12, 2009 - Logicomix, en epic search for truth
Reviews
- Math, Philosophy, Comics and Bertrand Russell’s Search for Truth, Publishers WeeklyPublishers WeeklyPublishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
, April 14, 2009 - Bertrand Russell: The thinking person's superhero, The IndependentThe IndependentThe Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, September 2, 2009 - Logicomix, Financial TimesFinancial TimesThe Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, September 5, 2009