John Mayberry on Foundations of Mathematics

0:00 Hi. Yeah, hi, John. Did you get my message? Yes, that's why I'm ringing you. I just got it. Yeah, I'm back home. I only got back home last night, very late. I've been away for almost three weeks. Yeah. Before you tell me anything else, can I ask you one question? How is James, how is James Ladyman's wife? Oh, good. I'm so glad because... You haven't named it. Right, well... The reason I ask is because James was due to be speaking on Saturday in Brussels at this conference and we got a message to say that the reason he hadn't turned up was that his wife had gone into labour and that there were complications, which obviously concerned me very greatly, so I was hoping that everything had been well. Good, so everything had turned out for the best, good. Okay, well that's marvellous news, and I'm very relieved because, you know, it... The form in which you got the message made it sound as if, you know, there might be real problems. I'm very, very glad to hear that. Well, I've had a... You must tell me. I mean, I've had three very eventful weeks, but I'll tell you about that shortly. No, it doesn't sound like it. Shades of our trip to Cleveland all those years ago. Well... Yeah, you mentioned that in your message. Well...

2:30 Well, did he decide to settle? If the procedures under which it was arrived at were held to be reasonable, then your case was going to be thrown out. Yes, I'm afraid this is where I was... I feared what happened from the beginning. Yes, well, I'd be guided by his opinion in the matter. I'm afraid, however painful it may be, you have to... That's what I thought for years, of course, but I mean... Well, unfortunately, they're holding all the cards, aren't they?

5:00 Well, wait a minute. Yeah, which he could do with at the moment, I'm sure. Yes, well, if that really is, you know, a solace to Maxim, so be it. I have to say, I think, I'm sorry to say it, but I think, you know, the barrister is absolutely right. I mean, the time has long gone, you know, long, long passed at which he could have drawn a line under the thing. I mean, just to carry on this campaign against Wiggins is not going to do him any good at all in his present situation.

7:30 We're now not going to have to be called because he's had to settle, so. But Maxim has got himself a job now, hasn't he? Well, he seemed to be quite enthusiastic about it last time you told me about it. Well, I mean, it's... I mean, it may not do justice to his abilities, but it's not that bad at the same time. No, it's not that bad. Yeah, I know that. We had a couple of people there from there at Boston. Amen. I'm sorry. I really think he should. I just can't see what possible good he does. I'm going to use it, Michael. They seem to think that they've got to... No, they seem to have... I'm afraid it sounds like they had game, set, and match in the litigation. Why in that case was it just kind of... why was the barrister so confident he didn't have a case in that case? Yeah, well of course they always play their strongest card. This chairman is the chairman of the employment tribunal. Yes, okay, so this was a hearing in front of an employment tribunal.

10:00 Well no, who in their right mind would want to have to share the department with Wiggins for the foreseeable future? We get nothing at all? There's a party to the action at all?

12:30 Well, you didn't actually see the other barrister, but there could be. I did. Could be. Yeah, but hear him in action. So, possibly... But I saw the results of his speech. Yeah, yeah. I think the instructions from the university were probably just to, you know, to bring the matter to a close and draw a line under it at the least possible cost to the university. I don't think, I think the whole point in all of this is, from what I can tell, is that the universities still have not taken on board. If they had taken on board, of course, you wouldn't be in this position. I mean, just what a complete shit Wiggins is. In that case, their tactics seem very strange in that case. Right, then that is the English way of doing these things, isn't it? Yes, the part is usually played by Wilfrid Hyde-White. I think you're right, that sounds very plausible to me. But you must have known from the beginning that the vice chancellor and the chancellor and the visitor were never going to come as a delegation, rather like the archbishop and the lord chancellor coming to see the 18-year-old Queen Victoria on her accession and sort of go on their knees to you and say, you know, Dr. Mayberry. We have come here to confess our grievous faults. We have been absolutely in error about this man Wiggins from the beginning. I'm afraid that really only happens in the works of J.K. Rowling. I think you may actually, morally, have won, but it's, of course... Well, what happened is that we've gone... Yeah, he was one of the under Wiggins' thumb as producer of cases.

15:00 Not both of them. They didn't think Wiggins ever understood a word of what their joint papers were about. Well, that is absolutely awful if that's the case. I mean, it really is outrageous. He's not worse than that, if that is the case. He's an impostor. He's much worse than that. He's not just an impostor. He's a thief of other people's reputation and worth. It's outrageous. Ball told me that he had published one of his own students' thesis under his own name. He said that Caltech were happy to get rid of him. Well, why the hell didn't the student pick up there? Well, Ball said what he did. Ball said that Caltech were happy to go, that this sexual harassment case was not like an excuse, that they wanted to get rid of him. They were desperate. Otherwise the unfortunate lady with the seated stance was the Mrs. Simpson. The Mrs. Simpson of Caltech. I hate to say it, but I think that going down that cul-de-sac was practically a big mistake. It didn't make any difference. Well, it may not have made any difference. No, it didn't make any difference. I think it was a white one. Yeah, it was a white one. And that upset me more than this last one. This is kind of a, we went from absolute defeat to a kind of battle. What depresses me here, and I'm sure it depresses you and far more, is the fact that the universe just would not take on board, would not even let the economy take seriously, the fact that you had testimony from an extremely eminent people in the field as to how good a mathematician you were. They were correctly calculated. Well, they probably were correctly calculated in front of the tribunal, but that's not my point. My point is the fact that they themselves were completely indifferent to the fact that... Well, I mean, who's, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who's opinion?

17:30 Well, I mean, we have an email in which Wiggins, in which Ball read, in which Wiggins says, I don't want people like you, John Ball, interfering with me, giving me their opinions on this kid's faith. I mean, he'd be glad to like John Ball, I mean, you know, for a start. I mean, he's the ex-president of the IMA, he's the guy that negotiated... Well, it's a bit like saying, I don't want, you know, that's a bit like, I don't want Penrose giving me an opinion on my paper because it works for anybody, you know. It's ridiculous, isn't it? Absolutely. It reminds me of Steve Simpson, remember, when he was kind of, you know, the man who said, you entered the bar and brawled, believing that you were actually entering on the same side as him, and he promptly smashed the chair over your head. To be fair, that was Friedman, not Sid. Freedman Simpson has got a bum boy, and I don't know who he is, right after this. They've had a major call. They have, apparently. Well, I was thinking about this from college, I just don't... Shades of post-op for his half. But it was Simpson who launched the attack on Grosvenor in the course of that speech. What? Yeah, yeah. I mean, the idea of Simpson attacking Grosvenor is ridiculous, isn't it? Oh yeah, is that before or after he went to fight for the Vietcar? As if that was some kind of a clinching argument. A boonery of that kind. Oh, by the way, I've got a very funny, I've got a very funny, yes, yes, I know, I was just about to say, I've got an extremely funny, I may have even sent it to you, did I actually send you the clip of the, oh, about Ayn Rand, there's this very funny, there's this very funny. An amateur dramatic production which was done for four people for a very eminent, very conservative economist who was at the University of Chicago, not Friedman, I'm talking about Milton now, not Harvey. But one of his middle-earthian contemporaries, one of those people that's always lined up with Friedman and Hayek and the Monteveran Society as a spokesman for radical monetarist economics.

20:00 The von Mises, of course. The von Mises Society had a party for the old boys and I for the first time, and this was about 20 years ago, so it must be dead now, but they've got this clip from this sketch which they did, which was a, it wasn't very well acted, but it was very, very amusingly written, and it's a, it's a dig at Abraham. It has this hallowed, bright midwestern grad scoop presenting himself at this man's apartment in New York in the 1950s in order to tell her how much he admires her work and he's met by these Acolytes in the Abraham society, obviously, were meant to be people like Simpson, and Ball, and Blue, and all the rest of them. And he starts by putting his foot in it by saying, you know, Miss Ram, I just want to say that I think your novel, The Brow of Zeus, it's just got to be one of the finest books I've ever read. A deadly, deadly quote. Exactly what you mean by the words, one of. In the end they're kind of tying this guy up and giving him the third degree because. It's actually very funny. I'll just play it to you, I've got a little bit of a flippin'. You have a more... is this a Volker or something? No, no, it was the, it was Greenspan. Greenspan? Greenspan. Greenspan was the one who fell out alive. Said even to her father. I know that's true. When he was a young man, the slip of a thing. He's a paragon. I didn't realise he began his career as a Nixon staffer. Obviously a very bright man.

22:30 There was a piece, I guess it was in the Spectrum, I can't remember. Anyway, one of his successes, one of his successes, my job, as soon as the party Everybody was using basically Black and Scholle's algorithm, and she's saying that that was born from the beginning, if she's right, because she didn't talk about the second half of the piece, it's only about the kind of pure history of math part of it. She's a very interesting girl, I would love to, I've got all her details of course. She's actually at Rezyse. Rezyse is, um, Institut de Recherche d'Epistemologie et d'Histoire des Sciences Exactes. It's a section of Paris CETIEM. It's an institute that was set up jointly between the University of Paris CETIEM and Cap of the Grand Ecole. For the history and philosophy of science, it's effectively the equivalent of the history and philosophy of science back in the day at Cambridge. It's based in... Is the University of Paris set in the sort of elite chunk of the... It's pretty elite. After the Sorbonne, it's the one that seems to have the highest reputation. It's also the one which has the highest concentration of math and science, mathematical sciences. But research is of an interesting... They have some very, very bright people there. I've been recording their seminars now for four years, and they've really had some very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, I'd say that's the top end of the scholarship. One of the good things about the philosophy of mathematics in class is that the two disciplines have nourished each other to a vast degree. You saw that Peter Lipset had died. Peter Lipset, the head of the Michael Reddits, etc. Cambridge. He died of a massive heart attack around 1353. It's a hell of a shock. I just opened a copy of the Guardian three days ago, two days ago, and there was a picture of him. He died at the weekend. It was certainly unexpected. He'd just had a massive heart attack.

25:00 Yes. Do you want to know more? He was a delightful guy. I actually thought he was a much younger man than that. He was a very, very bright, you know, New York Jew, who was very, very anglicized, and who, I can't believe this, but he's actually been beaten a little bit, but he's a little, he's the head of the history of mathematics, so to say, he was Michael Redhead. Michael, I saw about two months ago, when I was in England, in fact, when I was over to this thing with Bob Corley and all, and I thought he was going to be a very good face. Uh, his book, which he wrote jointly with, um, a job come out from Harvard University Press, and they had a launch party for him. He came down to Oxford with, I'm trying to remember the guy who co-authored it, he co-authored it with, one of his first kids, um, a guy with an Arabic name, who's very, very, um... I'm sorry, anyone who's seen the event, you know, after 55, you can't remember names. Everybody can't remember names. Yeah. Uh, it's something like, uh, about, uh, about, um... Well, it's all right. I can't remember. Something like, it'd be about... I can't remember. I can't even write anything right now. Well, I only met him, in fact. He gave the, he gave the seminar at Oxford. It was extremely good. And, really, Michael's work on symmetry, space, and force, which goes back to, you know, the very beginning of his work. He wrote this in the 19th century. And the next day they have a launch party, but I went along. And he's in very, very good form. He's mentally completely there. He's all there. But the problem is the scope of the story, not his features, but the part of the brain that controls the vocal cords, which is something quite different. But it means that you can only form words with great difficulty, but it's not what you classically have in scope victims, it's not a phasia, it's not a phasic, it's strictly to do with the part of the brain that controls the white box. He has, he sounds a bit like, you know, like one of those people who's had their voids of oxygen cut out because they've had cancer in the back, but in his case it is neurological. So it is a struggle to just speak, but...

27:30 But mentally, he's completely intact and as good as he ever was. I mean, the book is evidence of that, because the book is clearly, you know, I would certainly say, to a nice extent, his work. And he was able to... he still enjoys going to seminars and following them, and... He asked me about Will, which I thought was nice, and he said, well, as I say, we just had this meeting in Boston. What Euler said was that the real numbers should be thought of as ratios of infinitesimals. Now most people, when they encounter that, think, well, that just shows that we can't begin to penetrate what's going on in the minds of people in the 18th century. How can you make sense of this? Well, Bill thinks he's got a way of making absolutely rigorous sense of it, and you'll have to listen to it, because I'm not going to be able to encapsulate it for you. One thing I am quite confident about, because I've talked about it a lot, is... His view of the relationship between the theory of real numbers is very, very much intended to be a 21st century addition of the doctor's view. It is intended to be a general theory of the ratio and proportion of special entities. I'll explain what I put in mind. I put in mind this by reading something that you said in that little paper that you sent me the other day about the philosophy of simple algebra. You've read it already? Yes, I've read it. I've read it as soon as you gave it to me. And I think there's something in there which completely was spot on. What? Remarkably, one of the things that Bill was saying to me when we were sitting with Colin and Katya in Boston about what he thought was absolutely right about the nature of variable quantities and that the 19th and 20th century is not wrong, however, I am not sure if I'm doing this right...

30:00 He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. He lost a bit of weight, which we could all see more than him. Against Maximum Generality and about Groton-Deep, a conference partly about the 50th anniversary of Groton-Deep, and Jean-Pierre Marquis, the guy from Montreal, who gave a very nice talk about Daniel Kahn's work, Daniel Kahn, the actual functor in there, who was at the meeting. And Bill Beckham for the first time. They had never encountered one of them before. They had an absolutely fascinating conversation. Thank you very much. Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? Who can? While he was on the kibbutz, he got extremely interested in topology, mainly because of his interest in electrical networks, and he thought he wanted to go and learn some topology, so he heard that there was this famous topologist called Samuel Eilenberg, who was visiting the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that year, so he just turned up at Eilenberg's lectures and sat through two or three of them, and then afterwards went up and tested them. So let's start at Eilenberg. Eilenberg first kind of swatted him away because he thought that he was some kind of a nut, and the fact that he was also an engineer and not a mathematician.

32:30 So at first Eilenberg was pretty un-inclined, a wee sort of thing, was pretty un-inclined given the time of day, and somehow Eilenberg could have been pretty arrogant in that way. But after three days, Can was clearly very persistent, you know, in a very, very, the way that any one shoe can be very persistent, drove Eilenberg to the point that Eilenberg said, okay, just gave him a problem set basically, and said, okay, go away, do these, and bring back the others. And Can sat down and did the whole lot, you know, that same night before that Eilenberg in the morning. And Allenberg had expected him to have at least a week working full, and the moment that Allenberg saw what this could have done, he started to take it seriously, because he realized he obviously had a very great deal of mathematical abilities there, and anyway, he offered to get him into Columbia on the grad program, and he did, and... He did his work in algebraic topology, but almost all his work was in k-theory and algebraic topology, and he only discovered the adjoint function theorem almost by accident, just by noticing what was going on in these complexes with which k-theory and algebraic topology. He was mainly working in homotopy, and he always thought of himself as a topologist pure and simple. He only ever published one paper in category theory, and that was the adjoint function theorem. Interestingly, all the speculation, which Bill was saying, still goes on. And amazingly, because the day after I got back to Paris, I went to a meeting at Resailles, on, would you believe, the Android quantum theorem. And there was a guy, there was a young guy from Germany, Ralph Comer, who's written a big fat book about this. He thinks he knows it all. He's a smart kid, I actually quite like him. But he spent half this lecture speculating about what Kahn must have said to Lorvier and what Lorvier must have said to Kahn all through between 1958 and 1970. And I kept my mouth shut because I could testify with absolute certainty that they had met and spoken for the first time ever 24 or 48 hours before. And I was the only person in the room who had been a Witten still. And not only that, but Carlton said that the choice of the term adjunct function had nothing more ever to do with self-adjoined operations in Hilbert space.

35:00 In 1958, he was mathematically so ignorant, having come out of his engineering background, he'd never opened a book on Hilbert space. He didn't even know what a self-adjoined operation was. It's quite interesting to have him. Set the record straight, he's a bit old, he's about 80, as he would be, he's really just turned 80, but he's very, very smart and, you know, still firing a lot of cylinders, and he kept on referring to Bill as this young man, this young man who was the first to actually see, who was apparently the first to see that I'd done something important, I mean, nobody ever explained to me what it was, but now, after having sat through Markey's lectures about the adjunct quantum theory, apparently I did something really important, you know, I never really, never realised until now what it was. Thank you. It was absolutely decisive turning point, because before Kahn, before 1958, nobody thought of category theory as a general framework for conceptual organisation of mathematics. Everybody thought it essentially was very powerful machinery, but essentially machinery for proofs in homology and cohomology. And with outlying bolt-ons that might lead on to other interesting things in other areas, nobody thought of it as an encompassing framework. After Kahn they did, and pretty well immediately. It's a very entertaining mass, and very modern, very subtle things. Well, yet another black market swing-in. Oh, I, yeah, yeah, because... Thank you for watching. You'll enjoy this talk with Marcus.

37:30 Which again is also the 50th anniversary, in fact this meeting was really to honour the 50th anniversary of all three, the Unida Lemma, the Adjoint Function Theorem, and the great big, big programme that we laid out at the Edinburgh International Lecture, which was obviously much more general, but which contained all of that, and subsumed all of that. They had another good meeting on the Unida Lemma in ENF, so they've gone a mile, which Carter gave a lovely talk on. For a general audience, I mean, it's not even an audience of mathematics. You do have to be good at explaining. Well, it's like, it's about recognizing the form of it. Yeah. And if it's the form of it, it's great. And I think, myself, I think it's great. I know what you're going to do. Beyond conventional axiomatics to the conventional axiomatics in the way of abstracting, this is the next step, and it's trying to throw away all the, I mean, what abstraction does is throw away the innocent and leave behind what's essential. This is a stage further. The part of the thing going from, I mean, literal abstraction is not there. No, no, no, you made that point very well. I think we all agreed on that. But if we think of abstraction as... It's extremely slippery and very dangerous. If you think of it as throwing away essentials, then Wolbachian structuralism and mathematics is the first stage in getting control of it.

40:00 Yeah, although Wolbachian, of course, didn't have a good or clear theory of structures. They tried to use one in the 1940s, but it was never taken up and used because there was too much generality. They actually needed the proofs like the adjoint fungal theorem and the unidal lemma in order to see just what the kind of links between their notion of structure and the notion of representation of structure and the ingredients that are obviously there in the background from set theory that you need to get going. Just what those things were. If abstraction is like ignoring particularity, then you can almost see that moving into, moving from, what Bakhtiyan axiomatically termed a set theoretic into a category theoretical, treatment is precisely another, it's another, we're cut. ...cutting away of irrelevant stuff. Yeah, that's part of it, except that there's something more involved here. It's not just cutting away of irrelevant stuff, it's also... It also provides the machinery in order to analyse what the structure is in these... I mean, the point is, one of the most misleading things that's said about mathematics is that it ignores the interior object, And so on and so forth. I don't understand enough about it. I'm not far enough old to really understand what it stands for.

42:30 The concrete category is really the sort of heart and soul of the category. I mean, I think it's probably no longer true, but I mean if I get to the point where I see it, there was, I believe, there probably was a stage in which that was true. That's what I'm trying to hide. That's extremely interesting, but I mean, typically, I mean, from an abstract point of view, certainly, I mean, when you do abstractions, you tend to lose contact with the concrete reality underlying. And, I mean, that's as much true of a I think in many ways, Catherine's really got to be able to give you the tools to prevent that, kind of. Yes, thanks. I'm wondering how far... I mean, the really interesting question to me is whether conceptually one can have a notion of foundation which does dispense with what, from your viewpoint, There are logical semantic preliminaries which are given by set theory to have an ultimate ingredient definition of concepts in a rigorous way that one has to start with derivatives which are a part of set theory in a very lightweight but indispensable sense. And I think that it is possible that we may arrive at such a theory and it's going to come, if it does come about, it's going to come through. This is one of the talks which Marquis gave, not in fact at this meeting, but at a previous meeting in Madrid about two months ago, which I found extremely interesting.

45:00 But I can't tell you reliably whether this programme is going to be successful at the moment, I think, well the jury's certainly still out, but the jury hasn't even been sworn in at this point because most people would say that when you're really pushed you can't define the notion of a category without appealing, clearly appealing to the notion of a collection of objects and maps and therefore there's got to be some underlying notion there, a relatively lightweight notion of the lightweight amount of... And the very notion of object that one's appealing to is the kind of what's sometimes called the metaphysically ultra-thin, gregorian notion of object, in the sense of something whose identity is decidedly the case that it is or is not the same as... Which, therefore, in some loose sets of things which classical logic is true of, and the semantics of classical logic is given in set theory in this, again, very lightweight section. I still think that may not be the end of the story, and I think that there's some very interesting ideas coming from the problem of geometry that... It's a matter of understanding what this story consists of. And what is in front of your nose. Well, you did keep it up, I agree. But the things which appear to be the ultimate ingredients, if you've dug deep enough in the 18th century, 17th and 18th century, were clearly not the things which apparently had come into clear focus in the 19th century The view that what was the end of the story for them is just going to remain the end of the story for all time to come, I think it is just a pre-judge that there is one absolutely clear and linearly ordered sense of what it is to be a foundation for one concept and a foundation for another. It seems to me that there are so many different dimensions on classical, epistemological, logicosemantic and methodological that are all involved in subtly intersecting. There are mutually modifying ways of the notion of being a foundation, on which different weight gets placed at different stages in the development of the subject. The only thing which is wrong with that, from your point of view, is that it seems to cut off mathematics from certainty, from being the science in which we not only know necessarily, we not only prove what is true,

47:30 Conclusions, yes, yes, I agree. Well, I think we may in the end have to give up that vision of mathematics, but I agree with you on that one. Well, I think we should only give it up if there's much change. I agree. I mean, because it's what really makes mathematics and mathematics physics. Yes, I've been trying to see the first principles of mathematics and physics as ultimately much more intimately bound. If you want to start with each other then I think you would be. After all Newton and Weyl certainly thought that way. I mean there have been great mathematicians, Newton, Weyl, others who clearly did think of it. But weyl thought he was doing physics. But I agree, that's certainly not the understanding of the subject, certainly not the understanding of foundations we've had for the last hundred years. I was going to say 150, but then I stopped myself because that's actually, yes, but it is almost 150 now. Well, if you count from the arithmetization of analysis, yes, maybe 150. Yeah, one of the things as you get older you have to keep in mind is that 100 years ago keeps getting closer and closer. I'm old enough to just remember when a hundred years ago was the country of the wall. And now it's... I mean, I... Yeah, that is... And again, being a real... boring old cop, I'm... I've always thought, although it doesn't, of course, have any bearing on his intellectual abilities, I suspect he's one of, as you know, greatly condense his greatness, but I do think Kripke, no, no, no, but Kripke is not just, I think not just completely, utterly rock-headed in what he says about, essentially, you know, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why,

50:00 I'm so bloody pleased with them all because of Kripke models, which are just an utterly incidental fragment of the sheet and stuff. They were genius before. No, they weren't. They were not. That was exactly the time. Le Rey had already done all the sheet models in the late 1940s. Sorry, but you don't know this, do you? No, we don't. No. I mean, the sheet model was already completely... The thing, the mathematics that lies at the basis of Kripke models was already quite clearly understood by the functional algebraic parameters in 1950s, even before, and it was also quite clear, well, Bill, in his thesis of far more detail than Kripke did, that was 1960s. Kripke does not deserve credit for anything really... Well, it's a really pretty trivial... Well, he did it on his own. He just discovered a model for intuitionistic logic. It's called the Marley-Interesting Model. It was motivated by ideas that were then around in modal logic and epistemic logic. Okay, but it's not... The way that people in philosophy of logic, in philosophical logic, sort of build up among the greatest achievements of the 20th century. No, that's... It's just so trivial by comparison with what other people think. I mean, he actually did. It was trivial by comparison with even Peckham's proofs. It was trivial by comparison with what Peckham did. It was trivial by comparison with what Brogan did in discovering. Yeah, but you can do coin stuff using Christian knowledge. Well, you can illustrate it. My father would say it was the other way around, but you can show what Cripple models were about much more clearly, indeed, by looking at what Kevin did, or indeed, by what Tim and Will Beer did, a little bit later, a little bit later, or something like that.

52:30 It was far more general. Spoke any time of it? Well, what I think is funny, I had the experience of actually being with him in a campsite in Berlin. I and two other people, I won't even mention their names now, but two other people, or one guy and one girl, his girlfriend. I was stuck with Saul Kripke, Michael Moss. I can't remember his girlfriend. Barbara. He was, actually. I disliked him. But he wasn't much different. But I was stuck with Ben. He was sad, actually. I actually had to support him because I thought that was so ludicrous in my life. I may not be the world's greatest, you know, scoutmaster, but in the end I just had to kind of kick it out and take charge. It was never a proper money-saving art book. But you know what's odd? I mean, if you look at naming assessors, which I couldn't bring myself to read, actually, but I have read them, and I think it's really, I think he's mistaken about all the different things. Well, I haven't bought any views on it, and I don't think I would read it. I damn it, it's a venture, right? But, I mean, the point is that... If you think about the opening passages, the opening passages are, I mean the preface, I guess, or an introduction, whatever, he says that these are notes taken from a lecture. They were taken from a lot of lectures. I was there. I heard him give those lectures. I have the whole of the 1973 and 74 lecture, so I can still remember. I have a little yellow sense state of my cow in Wilberforce. I still remember every word of it. I mean, having heard the bugger speak.

55:00 With all the hawking and spitting and all your noses, and in the thing, it just kind of... Well, that's why I don't particularly want to listen to them again, but I assure you, I've actually got the original recording of those lectures in my... I mean, I've got, okay. 26,000. So the guy gets a fluent lecture, but I've never heard him. Yes, he's about as fluent as... He's absolutely... he can't... You can hardly express it. No, I can't. It's completely incoherent. It was only because he had David Williams, Michael Dunnett, Peter Strawson, and the English philosophers there, to quit it for two hours afterwards about exactly what the hell he meant to say, that at the end of it he was able to force it into more or less one of the actual prose. He actually wrote it. Well, I've got the original. Actually, that's a good question. I've got the original. And actually, this is probably some claim to importance. I've actually got the original tapes of those lectures. He gave both the Sherman Lectures in London and the Loch Nessers in Oxford, on which name are set to be based. I recorded both sets of lectures. I think that what he did, he edited down the transcript. You mean they made the transcript? The transcript was made, not so much from the transcript as from the discussions afterwards. With Michael Dunnett and Wiggins and Swartzen and other people like Chris Peacock and Gerard Evans and younger mates in philosophy at Oxford at that time. Was this in the early 60s? No, it was 1973-1974. He gave the Locke lectures in... Oxford in 1973 and the Sherman lectures in London the following year. Yes, I know, I've heard. Jesus, what are you saying? He's got worse since then. Well, but I mean, what kind of vanity or insecurity would prompt him to say that, you know, it's as if he was... Well, he is extremely vain. He is very vain and clearly also insecure. I hate to say it, but he's absolutely archetypal. Protests, clearly, intellectually overdeveloped, emotionally retarded, American Jewish kid, he was a child prodigy, like Harvey Brinkman, who in so many ways resembled him, so Harvey Brinkman was obviously a very smart man, he was the archetypal, very smart man, I wasn't around when he was 63, which is when he did this stuff.

57:30 I mean, one can be very bright and still relatively inauthentic, but John Bell's story on this is, on his What was the most interesting thing about this view was that all teachers would be sometimes cold-headed. Well, poor John. I mean, it did him no favors. But he just had the incredible, inestimable advantage of not having been sent to school. Well, I mean, I can imagine. I mean, I think back when I was 13 or 14. You know, I mean, if I had been going to school, if my parents had been coaching me, I might have, you know, I might have... You might have lost the field's medal as well. No, I don't think so. Oh, come on, John. No, I wouldn't have been that good, but I would have been much... But you think you would have been better than you are? I taught myself calculus when I was four. Yeah, you were very, very, very kind. You'd never have done that. I needed to be at a good school. Of course, I thought I wouldn't have won. I lost curiosity when I was at prep school. My prep school was the junior school, I did alright, but I would have done, I mean, one of the reasons, I've never said this to anybody, one of the reasons I didn't go back to an Ely reunion, blamed myself for being so bloody intellectually lazy, but I also blamed Ely for not, first of all, for having given me the two most dreadful years of my life, and having remained in the prep school.

1:00:00 Where I was at age 12, which was the junior school for nursing teachers, I would have been in common with a court in every subject, without exception, especially where I had no tuition at all. I might not have been much better than I am, but I certainly would have been stretched further and I would have been forced to work. The point is that that school, because it was pretty much an academic one, it did. And if I had stayed in, if I had gone to Thatcher Towers instead of Ely, I would certainly have had a much better time. That's partly because, by any box of character, of weakness, I'm just going to prove that I'm not, I'm only being interested in what I'm supposed to be interested in. Oh my god, I mean, I could never find it. I mean, I, my school was so awful that it never even occurred to me that it sort of worked. No, but then you were so bright that you could teach yourself. I probably did that after the age of seven or eight. My mother was, I mean, my mother, but she didn't know anything about science. I loved my father very, very deeply, and more deeply than I can possibly say, but my mother was totally unintellectual.