As you pondered over an example of Russell’s paradox, the rest of class would have moved ahead with their lesson. For several of us, school was a traumatic experience because of the devil incarnate; Math. Supposedly ruled by the right half of our brains, there was neither “reason” nor “logic” in being subjected to solving sums with strange unknown quantities and proving theorems. And if proving 1=2 was not enough, we also had to establish that 1 is not equal to 2 as a corollary. It was perplexing. It was all Greek.
In 2008, things were still Greek. Logicomix~ The Epic Search for truth, a graphic novel based on the life of Bertrand Russell and his quest for the foundations of mathematics, written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou took Greece by a storm when it was released in October the same year. It continues to be the bestseller in the country and created waves around the world during the run-up to its release in US and UK in September 2009. Within days of its publication, Amazon was out of stock.
Illustrated by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna, Logicomix is an ambitious graphic-novel on logic written for non-logicians and non-mathematicians. In the works for almost five years beginning from 2003 and created in a style reminiscent of Tintin’s author Herge, it is a multi-layered and multi-cast story of two extremes; logic and madness. Or perhaps, non-extremes that are intertwined just as philosophy and logic can be. It is a highly human story of passion for answers. For certainty.
In this search, writes a blogger, of Math as exact, as something complete and consistent, there were many who suffered from madness. Europe’s 20th century intelligentsia in the realms of philosophy and mathematics like Godel, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, Poincare complete the cast of the book and provide a conversational narrative to the graphic novel. There are also sections with self-references by the authors and artists and backgrounders on some of the concepts and personalities introduced in the story.
Russell was a natural choice for the protagonist to deal with the subject of the book, being one of 20th century’s greatest mathematicians and philosophers. Says Doxiadis in a short documentary (in 3 parts on YouTube) on the making of Logicomix, “Bertrand Russell was an atheist yearning for the absolute. A cynic masquerading as the idealist. Or was it the other way around?” Russell and other intellectuals turn into superheroes of the comic-book world dominated by caped and masked heroes. A trend that changed with the publication of Art Speigelman’s Pulitzer winning graphic novel in 1986, Maus.
Portraying something as complex as a life within the pages of a book surely faces hurdles. More so as a comic book. The labour and intensive planning behind the making of a graphic novel is well captured in Logicomix, one page at a time: the creation of a graphic novel. But it all boils down to one thing; has the novel been a success or not? Digressing from the mainstream media and going with the reader’s reviews on Amazon, there are vast differences in what has been said on the book success. Reportedly great license with historical facts has been taken in the name of maintaining a flow in the narration. The self-referencing sections too are seemingly not as well-incorporated as Art Speigelman’s style where he too draws self-references. On the other hand, they are also cited by readers as providing respite from heavy ideas. The book reportedly tries being a Russell for Beginners as well as Logic for Beginners and many other things. But as one reviewer puts it referring to the success of the authors in conveying the ideas:
“I think they were, by and large, but once again, it is up to the reader to decide because the depths to which the message is delivered depends very much on the reader's depths of understanding of the problems described and the reader's familiarity with the literature.”
They say Math and Music are the two universal languages. Yet, they are pursued by few as a profession and are riddled with stories of unsurpassed eccentricities and brilliance. Logicomix at some level is an amalgamation of the abstract and the certain, the artistic and the rational, as it ambitiously attempts to bridge perceived divides between the two fields.
Via YouTube: One Page at a Time. The making of Logicomix
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