Yes Virginia, there IS a Bourbaki
Sep. 27th, 2010 03:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
michiexileI place part of the blame for this on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maradydd
Virginia, your friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be professors' or students', or Grothendieck's, are little. In both the constructive and classical topoi, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless Platonic world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Bourbaki. He exists as certainly as groups and rings and fields exist, and you know that they can be bounded and give to your papers their highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Bourbaki. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no Hilbert schemes then, no universes, no topoi to make categorical all our logic. We should have no formalisms, except in logic and set theory. The french style with which modern algebraic geometry drains the brains of our grad students would be tempered.
Not believe in Bourbaki! You might as well not believe in Euler! You might get your advisor to hire postdocs to re-prove all of Éléments I - IX to find Bourbaki in them, but even if they did not see the personality of Bourbaki in all of these books, what would that prove? Nobody sees Bourbaki, but that is no sign that there is no Bourbaki. The most real things in the world are those that neither grad students nor full professors can see. Did you ever read Euler in his original Latin? Of course not, but that's no proof that he didn't write it. Nobody can grasp all of mathematics on their own.
You may read through the entire code of Maple and see what makes the computations work, but there is a veil covering the theoretic world which not even Grothendieck, nor even the united strength of all the Fields medalists that ever lived, could tear apart. Only stringence, formalism, elegance, compact writing, empty induction base cases, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Bourbaki! Thank Erdös! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of grad students.
maradyddDear Editor. I'm a 3rd year grad student. Some of my friends say there is no Bourbaki. My advisor says “If you see the personality in the lemmas, it's so.” Please tell me the truth: Is there a Bourbaki?
Virginia, your friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be professors' or students', or Grothendieck's, are little. In both the constructive and classical topoi, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless Platonic world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Bourbaki. He exists as certainly as groups and rings and fields exist, and you know that they can be bounded and give to your papers their highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Bourbaki. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no Hilbert schemes then, no universes, no topoi to make categorical all our logic. We should have no formalisms, except in logic and set theory. The french style with which modern algebraic geometry drains the brains of our grad students would be tempered.
Not believe in Bourbaki! You might as well not believe in Euler! You might get your advisor to hire postdocs to re-prove all of Éléments I - IX to find Bourbaki in them, but even if they did not see the personality of Bourbaki in all of these books, what would that prove? Nobody sees Bourbaki, but that is no sign that there is no Bourbaki. The most real things in the world are those that neither grad students nor full professors can see. Did you ever read Euler in his original Latin? Of course not, but that's no proof that he didn't write it. Nobody can grasp all of mathematics on their own.
You may read through the entire code of Maple and see what makes the computations work, but there is a veil covering the theoretic world which not even Grothendieck, nor even the united strength of all the Fields medalists that ever lived, could tear apart. Only stringence, formalism, elegance, compact writing, empty induction base cases, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Bourbaki! Thank Erdös! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of grad students.
