FW Lawvere

5:00 Not by people with connections. Get your life reported in the Wall Street Journal. That's your very existence is connection. It is very well connection, exactly, exactly. It's worse than the president.

7:30 That's, that's, yes, that's very interesting. It's so remarkable that this young man, he's so young still, he's doing this, and he's a mathematician by the way. Very brilliant one, proved this really deep and important theorem, yeah. Boldly proved what no man has proved before. No, I think Paul said that before. No, that's going to be my point. Well, actually, no, because it... Taking a leaf out of the logician's book, it has, well, ex falso quodlibet. In this case, ex falso the Illinois legislature. But the actual proof, well, the theorem that he thought he proved, and that was one of the ones that Cray was putting up, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, What was it that McLean was fighting against in the early 90s? It was a paper advocating that mathematics should change its... that there should be a portion of mathematics to end that rigour... Rigour as required. Dispense with proof. Yeah, yeah. Proof is much... Who wrote this? It was Arthur Jaffe. That's right, Jaffe. Jaffe and Quinn too, guys. Jaffe and Quinn. Yeah, Jaffe and Quinn. He is a physicist. In his paper, you see, you find that in fact the main thing that he's wanting to be accepted. If you want something to be accepted, it's precisely Witten's cosmology and his own business. They made great play at Witten, these guys, I remember. But he's central to their argument. That kind of pseudo-semi-physical, semi-theories, they're actually... I mean, there's the larger scale, they want us to believe in God. But within the science, they want us to believe in...

10:00 In speculation? In this particular... Particular brand of unanchored speculation. I remember hearing Soldiers himself talking about this. In fact, I've actually got an interview with Soldiers from about that time. It must be about 1990. I think it was while... I think it was when we were in Como, when you gave your survey talk, you know, 25 years at Cadbury State in Como, or was it maybe at another meeting? No, I'll tell you where it was. It was in San Sebastian. It was that same year, but in San Sebastian. And I interviewed him for about a couple of hours for the archive, and he was talking incredibly about this, about the way that photon had been built into a cult. So after Saunders' attack, he conceived the idea of it, and the manifesto of the play, That's what, that's what Fisk was involved in. What's at the place? Well, it's basically a little bittern head company right now. I knew that they certainly, and of course they, they, they promote Bias right now. Yes, yes. Oh, he does? How do they promote Bias? Does he ever, he doesn't ever. Well, he was, Bias was speculating about getting a grant from Templeton. This comes as no surprise. Some years back. At that time, it wasn't, I wouldn't do it, but it was something one should consider. Well, that's what I was hearing from Mark that they've been giving, but I don't know the details. Because he doesn't have any, neither does this, he doesn't have any mathematical substance. It's very interesting because he came and gave a talk at this, I hate to tell you this, but he came and gave a talk at the same seminar that your speaker was having tomorrow. This was about six months ago.

12:30 Don't be put off. The standards are rising steadily. They've risen by a big, big jump as of tomorrow morning. But he did. It was very interesting. I missed his talk. I'm so sorry. I wasn't able to get to it. But afterwards, I got a very interesting rundown from Mark. And he talked about Cartan and about Cartan's treatment of connection. He's got some student who's got some wonderful new gadget. ...which apparently completely cleansed of shreds and I wasn't there, it's okay, just wanted to move your bag. He tore it to shreds, apparently, and just said, well, I don't really understand what it is your student's done, but, you know, what you're claiming for is just nonsense. And, you know, Cartan's definition of a connection was made completely rigorous and clear by Erismont. Anyway, apparently, he got quite angry with Baez, and, you know, a very good framework. This, um, so I think the kind of the interest was might be able to give you a much, much clearer account. I was able to follow up exactly what it was that, um, that, um, Byers' student was claiming, or Byers was claiming, or not a student, but, you know, it's the usual thing with Byers. Well, I've got a student, and he's got this gadget, which is, of course, the beat of the universe, and which in some way reveals that. And everything you thought you knew about differential geometry beforehand has just all gone out of the window, and I'm the artist. Their money, presumably, comes from the people who make the supercomputers, though, right? Oh, I assume that was where the name came from. That's Cray. See, I'm sorry. No, Cray was something like Templeton, the big finance capitalist. He made a lot of money.

15:00 Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to seeing you again in the next lecture. Michael Atiyah. See, Atiyah's article promoting less precision also mentions Witten as the sort of main thing one should worship instead of mathematics. I remember hearing Saunders say, in fact he actually was giving it as an interview for me, saying that this is a really, really pernicious trend. At the time he understood it even more profoundly than I did at the time. The fact that somebody like Atiyah has become the president of the Queen's Advisory Committee obviously passed him so. True. And of course, like his friend Penrose and like his predecessor Russell, he has the O.N., the Order of Merit, which is the highest award.

17:30 And it's very interesting because that's the only award in the British Honor System that is actually given by the Queen personally and not by the advice of the men involved. All the rest are officially, I mean, she keeps giving it her name, but everybody knows that the people who are actually nominated for them are nominated by... Thank you for watching. So she obviously has some panel of people who tell her the best. And it can be very interesting. Dirac was a meldor. Penrose was a meldor. Atiyah was a meldor. Russell was a meldor. Post-Tamilton makes something about it. His native. In the Buckingham Palace, in other words, the personal friend of the Queen. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a tiny, tiny thing because, you know... Not to mention his nationality would change. Yeah, he obviously changed in this way. Not that it's a ten a penny, but the OM is very, very exclusive, as I say. They're only ever 12 members, and they're supposed to be the 12 most distinguished living British scientific or academic intellects. But as I say, she doesn't get to pick them herself, whatever the official URL is. But you should look at this article of Atiyah. Oh, I must. I will. The striking is that he uses this analogy. He says, just as we all agree free trade is a good thing, and therefore... And therefore, we all agree that national sovereignty shouldn't be taken too seriously, so also we should not take mathematical rigor too seriously. In one sentence, he has this hand. Talk about sleight of hand. It's very depressing. He's assuming we agree with this. I mean, this is... He can't have spoken to many French mathematicians recently. He must have sort of overstepped himself. I think he has a little overreached himself. We all agree that, you know, we all agree with preventive wars and we all agree with, you know...

20:00 It wasn't at the point of... they always talk about avoiding nuclear exchange, but that's precisely... There was an article about it, as I say, after I figured it out. And also I think the thing about Limerick is he of course is a perfect liberal. It's immensely useful. Why is it so useful to encourage praised conspiracy theorists? Because they provide excellent cover for the real conspirators. If you can paint anybody who believes in conspiracies at all, it's obviously Albert the Fairies, which look like the Rochers, let's face it. Then it becomes very much easier to suppress. Anybody who actually uncovers a rule. He's written some very loose stuff about mathematics, but it probably was me, but I mean, I, to be honest, have just put it down to the fact that, you know, he's reached his, you know, he's reached his anecdote hitch, as they say. He's done his great work, and he did do great work. I mean, put the Atiyah Singer Index Theorem in all the work he did in topologies quite a long time ago. Now he's just a superstar. He's done all the establishment things. He's been the master of trinity. He was the founder of the Newton Institute and the first head of it. He was the president of the Royal Society. He could spend the rest of his life making a rattle of pronouncements, but I hadn't actually seen that you're quite right to it. You were the previous president of the Royal Society. Exactly, exactly, exactly. So in fact there is a very serious political agenda there which I had not realised. I had just thought that he was a typical very senior member of the British establishment. I think he was enjoying his night at his lovely house in Masters Lodge in Prentice, interested in it, but not really having much in the way of a deep ideological agenda, but now I think much more inclined to think that he has got a very such ideological agenda and has had for a long time, and if I was to go back and read his philosophy of math papers carefully, they wouldn't just be, I actually thought they were just rather wishy-washy.

22:30 It just goes to show, at different strokes, the guy's an absolutely brilliant apologist and a deep, serious mathematician, but not so very serious for a lot of men. That's probably because he doesn't think philosophy of math is a serious subject, and of course he's right, but most of the people who do it, it's not. They're only a tiny handful of people, and I say one of whom I'm sitting next to, who really do what they call really serious people who do math. And you won't find them in philosophy departments, with the exception of Cohen and Zumbier. Scientifically, I've always felt, from our confusing math, I absolutely agree. And that's precisely why I think Catholics are majoring so much on this fundamental. FQX and Templeton, you know, just let's get... People in cosmology and fundamental physics in our grasp, and the rest will follow. That's their way. I think that's their way. They're the ones to watch. Well, I shall report back to you after listening to this thing in the Observatoire this afternoon. What do you mean? I can certainly believe that there was a very serious ideological gender back then, in the 60s, when they brought in all of the new mathematics. It was a scientific impulse. Scientists took advantage of the scientific spirit. I remember you saying that in your obituary notice for the song that's another one you're interested in.

25:00 No, no, they turned it into the opposite. Yes, they did. You cling at it, yes, people assume. ...teachers and scientists. Because everyone can see that, obviously, it is deeply in need of fixing. The trouble is that every time, you know, you've seen exactly this in British education, especially in math and science education. But Ian Stewart says that he's replacing them. They're indispensable and the thing will now just be more and more a series of soundbites and manuscripts and buzzwords. Well, that's what so-called science education in Britain has just become. You know, just teaching the kids a series of buzzwords. They're not all real scientific concepts at all. The French, at least. Certainly by comparison, the British and the US have been much more resistant to going down this road. The basic standard of math and science education in the schools is certainly still a long way to go, but it has gone down. And of course I'm really dreading what is going to happen now, because Sarkozy's agenda is of course for a big education, sweeping education. It will start with the universities, but it's also going to go right down through the high schools. And it will be pushed by, you know, already we're hearing the dreaded word module all over the place from his education minister. Well, there must be much more cross-disciplinary teaching and much more kind of inter-modularity, and we must get away from this idea, which has been the great bane of the French educational system, of teaching people in these restricted vertical groups, that's the expression, we must get away from teaching the kids. Which, i.e., rigorous divisions between subject matters, the idea, oh no, no, we've got to be much more of a melange, muddle everything up in their heads, don't teach them rigorous concepts, the propaganda, the rhetoric will be, this is all in the service of greater flexibility and cross-fertilization of ideas. But of course it will be...

27:30 It will be very interesting to talk to you about it. Who was the other one? John LeRae. Oh, LeRae, LeRae. It's news to me that LeRae was found away by a rhythm. He wasn't part of, he wasn't as closely associated with Kulbaki, which is a great benchmark for his words. Yeah, I keep, you know, don't worry, I promise you, I'll talk to my eye firmly on it. Somehow, somehow, it seemed that this turned out. Now, Tom, of course, in his later years was just, I mean, I talked to Tom when I was in IT. I remember when you met him at San Sebastian. Did you remember? Because I have the record of his talk and of what you said afterwards. You tore it to pieces. I forgot that. You did, you did. You tore it to pieces. Well, two years before that, I've been talking with him. Anyway, the point is this. I think someone has turned away. Someone like Satan, hypothetically. Absolutely. It was not, it was not even a framework, it became a framework for uncertainty, and it was such a good framework. Because it was so good as a framework for teaching. Exactly. Which is, of course, your whole point about foundations. Yes, exactly. But having such a serious, a scientist should...

30:00 There were people, Erisman's an obvious example, who didn't participate in the book because they did have... The point is that this whole discussion is very unserious. Atiyah's... Many of these says... In fact, when he mentions members of Wolbach, he does not mention Cartier or Eilenberg. He mentions the founders and many of the later ones. He doesn't mention those two. But his last thing is about, you know, Cartier urges that they should have used category theory, right? Well, he refutes that specifically, he says. Because he's reviewing, he's actually reviewing, judging what he says is probably rather bad. But in particular, it takes up this cry that, well, they shouldn't have used category theory. They should have used category theory. Oh, this isn't Cromer's book, is it? No, I forget the name of it. But anyway, the thing is, it takes the occasion of this review to attack that whole idea that they should have used category theory. It wouldn't have worked. This is a tie-up. This is a tie-up. I knew that Atiyah was an opponent of category theory. I did know that. That was quite clear, because I remember asking him several questions when he gave general philosophy of math talks, and getting into that wasn't, it seemed to me, for somebody of his degree, serious or worked out objection. It was just, oh, you know, it's just too much generality. It's the struggle to find correct generality in concepts of the correct level of generality. ...methods in Atiyah's work, which is why I couldn't understand his opposition to it. But I actually remember saying that to him. I'm not going to say it to him, because he's a complete outsider, but I actually remember saying to him after one discussion that you use methods in proving and all these other work, and these are very functorial, these are pure functorial methods. It's just tools, it's just machinery. The trouble with category theorists is that they try to make it into...

32:30 You know, into a dogma, into a church. That was his way. They tried to make it into a church. Well, in other words, factual reality is perfectly good at the level of machinery, but, you know, it turns up here and there, although the maths are true, and so what, you know, so it belongs to other fertile concepts, but... Well, I wish you would attack me by name. Yeah, well, exactly. I was just thinking, well, I was looking at him in the eyes and said, why don't you just come out and say, you know. Bill Laulvier's got it wrong. At least then you can start debating seriously and not send this completely underhand to the way. Even after all these years, and even I, have it difficult to accept bottomist analysis of the whole thing. Well, of course, it's because of Marxism-Leninism. That's why they hate you. That's why they attack you. Well, I think in Atiyah's case it is. Probably is. Now that I realize he has much more of a conscious agenda than you and I. I would have thought he was just that he had his particular mindset as a mathematician, and he's a great mathematician, he's proved some wonderful things, but um... Well, I think Fatima is very wise. Well, he's the very fact he used that expression. They tried to turn it into, actually he said a dogma, not a church. Well, what do churches have if they're not dogmas? It's very interesting. And hyperdoctrine. And what was that line about, Biss, about let's have a world without connections, especially without connections on principal fiber bundles? Which party is he standing for, by the way, Biss, or is he standing as an independent? Oh, for the Democrats, sorry. Although his academic peers don't know. Yeah, well, yeah, exactly, it was the crazed.

35:00 He was an honest fanatic. He was an honest fanatic. He was much more upright. He was an honest fanatic. He was quite vague. He was kind of going to press the button. I can just remember, because my earliest political, actually my very earliest, because I can remember the Nixon-Kennedy election quite clearly as well. But 64, which was, you know, Johnston, Goldwater was, I was, no, I was 13, and I remember being quite seriously scared that, you know, if Goldwater got in, that he'd be the guy that's obviously completely crazy, he's going to start anything. He threatened at one point in that campaign that the British government, it wasn't even the British government, it was the British, British leyland, um... Thank you for your attention. He actually said in one of his speeches that, you know, the British would be told they couldn't deliver these buses to Cuba, and what if they were already on his way, then he would order the USA to torpedo the ship, even if it was a British ship carrying the buses, he would torpedo a British ship if it was carrying buses to Cuba. This, yeah, he was an honest fanatic, he didn't... I think even even the most extreme right. None of that sentimental crap that Carter and people used to come up with about the mother country. The lousy British socialists are going to sell buses to Cuba. ...was sabotaged at the dockside, not while it was in England, but when it got, I think, across to Rotterdam, or wherever its last port in Europe was. And, because I can remember, of course this is going back to 1964, so it's over 40 years ago, they did in fact, and it must have been done by... They did in fact sabotage the ship, because I can still remember the photographs of the ship on its keel, capsized in Rotterdam harbour, with all these buses, they did actually send another lot of buses, but of course they were waging such an intense hidden war against Cuba at that point, they weren't able to determine that they did actually sabotage the ship, and it was never officially admitted.

37:30 It's possible to see who else would have carried it out and why. It was a little bit later, that was I think after the election, that was after Williams were back in. In fact, it was around the time of the Tonkin Gulf incident, it was around December 1964. Pfizer was there, but it was not going to try. I promise you, I've been keeping a careful eye on it. Trust me. Because I've got your lectures in it. All the paperwork in it, I don't know. I carry them closer. I'm stuck up now, I don't know. No, no, it'll be the end of the line. Can I have a look at that? Or do you want to leave it until we get to the hotel? It's alright, I'm keeping an eye. Things are moving anyway, just to make it easier for people to get in and out of the train. Yeah, because wherever we move it's going to be awkward. Actually, I've just remembered, talking about comments, I have to introduce you tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning, is that when it is? No, the Hussle thing is on Friday, but the talking, the heck on the mile is tomorrow morning, 11. Yeah, so tomorrow morning. That's the day you asked me to put it. Of course, you thought then you were going to be coming in yesterday, so.

40:00 But, yeah, it's at 11 o'clock tomorrow. So, this says here, D-R-A-X-T, draft, yeah, circulated or quoted or, oh, sorry, I think it, that's very interesting. Did I send you the unexpurgated? No, no, no, only the expurgated. I actually had expurgated. Only the expurgated. That I should be very interested in, yeah. I have got some of your unexplicated papers, you've sent me quite a few. I remember you gave me the unexplicated version of the talk on inclusion and membership in Bolzano, inclusion versus membership, why the hell should we believe there has to be a global top element to Gregor Piano? That's the way that I use it. That was the one with the ideological... Yes, I've got those first versions of that. Well, I'll have a look through these later on if you'll permit me, but it's quite... Oh, okay. Well, would you want me to make a copy while you're having your snooze? I promise to do that. Ah, yes. Ah, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, yeah, I was right. I gave you the abstract. You gave me the abstract of the other one. You gave me a short version about two pages of the... Yeah, you gave me a two-page version of that. Well, if you'll allow me to just have a look at that, I guarantee I'll give it back to you this afternoon. No, you're certainly not there for a long, long time. This one I have. Oh, you do have it. Oh, no, hang on. Wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no. I haven't seen this version. This is a slightly extended version. Yeah, yeah, no. No, I haven't seen that one. No, no, I definitely haven't seen this one, because the one you sent me definitely doesn't have Giovanni thundering. Yeah, there's a bunch of dogmas. Okay. All right. Oh, that's good. Well, anyway. Let me have a look at those, too. I'm primed.

42:30 In making more precise my formulation of these elements, at least what the general nature of them is, we can see from... Ah, no, this is the one that... Now, John mentioned this to me, that he'd received this splendid... I remember he was chortling over this when he told me that he'd... You sent this to John, didn't you, to John Statham? I don't know. I don't think so. Well, you've got his... I know, but... But you hadn't... Yeah, you didn't actually send it. Okay. Well, it must have been something else that he was... He was chortling over. Well, the abstract itself. Yeah, he enjoyed it very much. Yeah. Yeah, so... You want that back? I can copy them. It's very easy. No, no, no, no, I'm not going to show them to anybody, except the guy in the copying shop. There is a copying shop very near to the hotel, so it should be no problem. Oh, yeah. We'll be there just a little. Probably be there about 11.30. I'm looking forward to that very much indeed, but also you'll talk tomorrow. Well, that's just the other side of the Luxembourg Gardens from where you were staying earlier. You're on the other side of the Luxembourg Gardens from there. Yeah. I have been warned that he probably will, because Mark... I have to mention, well, I find my problems with Charles Mooney, as you know, and his sidekick, Rodin, will certainly be there, because he always comes to this chapter and seminar, and usually thinks pretty good rubbish, but he does, you know, I just say it by my tongue.

45:00 Well, I have to be careful what I say about Rodin, because he is actually quite a good friend of Mark, but I think that's anything for Mark. It was only after he shopped a double amount of money from Mr. Trevor Ford and never paid it back, as many others delight in his character, which I don't really want to go into now, but all these people are potentially crazy. Well, he's an absolute parasite as far as I can see. He should never have done it. He should never have done it. Well, he would be very, to put it this way, I doubt what they'd do if he was so damn unreliable. But, but, on the other hand, he would be very easy to recruit if he just saw himself in whoever was going to get his hat on his lunchtime, in his case. I mean, you know, the run of the bill, he just would not come. Common is not a criterion. I don't know whether it's just that he's incredibly thick. I don't know how you're doing. Like, you know, this guy's screwing me around. Well, I'm sorry, I don't want to be personal, but, um... In fact, I think I've got rather more time for Looney, because Looney is, I think, ideologically, it's pretty clear where he's coming from. He's Pacino and, yeah, exactly, left-wing followers of Gentile. Anyway, I promise you that when I do... When I met him, it was very interesting. I didn't realize that... I certainly learned one thing from him, which is how not to do it, not to give an introduction to a film or a talk, because you remember, was it 35 minutes? I think his introduction was longer than most of them. Well, he felt like longer, but it was certainly very long.

47:30 I can still remember that. I can still see the faces of the guys who came into the room while he was talking, stayed for 10 minutes, because they thought they obviously got the wrong room. I don't think you've ever witnessed anything like this. No, nor have I. I just couldn't believe it. Are you introducing me? Yes, I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen anything like this before. I promise I will. I can even do it before you go to bed if you want to. Don't check in. Can I tell you about this? Yes, yes. Well, he'll be there tomorrow, for sure, so we'll be able to have lunch with him after the call. He's not into his anecdotes, is he? Oh, no, I wouldn't say so. No, no, no, no, he's still firing on all cylinders. He's given some very, very nice talks. He could really tell us something, wouldn't he? OK, let's keep an eye on that. If it does... What if it does? No, I don't think so. I think it is. No, no, there are people getting on. No, no, it's OK. Wait a minute. It's OK. If it's OK, then we can go to Luxembourg. Excusez-moi. Excusez-moi. Excusez-moi. Luxembourg? No. No? Oh, no, I've got to get off then. OK. Excusez-moi, ma'am. Thank you for watching this video, please subscribe and hit that like button.

50:00 But to stop people from seeing it, okay, I think if you could just keep going, if we can get the bus, the 38, that will take us down to very close to your hotel, because I suspect we're going to have to stand in line for it, unless you're really feeling tired, which means we'll get a taxi, but we'll probably end up having to stand in line for the taxi. Yeah, you said it. The Paris taxis are pretty much the western part of the line. It wouldn't take us long, but I imagine the taxi line isn't about, you know, ten miles long at the moment. Actually, we want to stay up on this level because we're already in street level, so yeah, so we want to stay. Because sometimes there are taxis over there, but they go for a taxi.

55:00 The railway workers were inside the station. They had the vote. We asked them very nicely if we would remind them of the question because we were really desperate to get that chance. We will get one. You haven't seen any of this recuperation in general? I haven't? No, not really. Oh, no, sorry. And he's going to show up. Has he been butchered? Oh, man, when does he just start? Oh, about a month ago. He's passed away. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. And now, I'll be waiting for Tom to be doing some writing, erotical, interesting, and interesting. And now, I'll be waiting for Tom to be doing some writing, erotical, interesting, and interesting. I'm sorry, sir, but we're here in the front. No, no, it's in the front. It's in the front. I don't understand. When we wait for a taxi, we wait in the front. You're familiar. But you didn't arrive first, sir. No, excuse me, sir, but we're here in the front. No, it's here. It's here. It's here. Thank you.

57:30 Well, she passed before us. Thank you. Excuse me, sir, this is the taxi line. There are several other people. So why are you standing there now? Stay there. Well, two other taxis came and stopped here, and we forgot any of them, so I guess that's where we are. Nor there seems to be any. And so far, this is the best we've ever had. Well, I am very sorry to learn that, because he came to this meeting that I organised in the airport a while, two years ago, and gave an unusual point. I mean, I know the history, but he had a very violent argument at the meeting of the C, very violent, which I have to say, I have to say, he's scarcely the world's most informative speaker. On the other hand, I have to say, I think on the substance of what the argument was, he was right. He was accusing... The history completes, and his charges were probably quite soundly based, but he didn't do himself any favours or his cause any favours by the way that he put them. He was very, very aggressive, and Benabu was his kind of frail old man bit, you know. Yeah, that's completely... No, no, no, no, no, I'm saying he was playing very explicitly that role of his work. I realized what Colin put me right about. Colin told me the story and I said, no, I understood. I understood all the fucking space and the history of it. The true history of what he had done. He was told that he had the story. He was told what he was and he was from there.

1:00:00 So this had to be named after John Beck. He's claiming that? The Beck condition? Yeah. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much for your time. Okay. Yeah, that's why I haven't got a problem, as I say. The only person I have a problem with is that idiot. Merci, monsieur. No, as I say, Colin caught me right about the history with Menabu. Which apparently Chevrolet used in 64. I saw Beck using it in 67. I don't know whether Beck, with all these things, if you're seriously thinking about it, will probably come up with the same thing. I don't know whether you knew about Chevrolet or not, but in any case, probably I think it was just because Beck actually used it to prove the theorem, which made it public. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I dug up the abstract notes because in those days abstracts, talks presented at meetings of the society were published and sent to all members of the AMS, all libraries. So the meetings were really complicated and many of Tarski's results were very important.

1:02:30 Only in that form. Abstracts or bulletins. So, Quebec clearly states that descent and triplability are related. So, anybody who... Anybody in three years could have... Knowing, because the definition of Grotendieck descent and Meck-Tripoli are well known and available, so if you're told that they had the same thing in a certain context, namely the context where we have Meck-Severlaken, you can figure it out in three years and publish it. The man who was a collaborator in this talk, Bo, the guy who wrote the whole novel about Meck-Tripoli is a very... Oh, Zach Hulabek! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, Musee de Luxembourg, which is the museum of the Senate, about Archimboldo, the Renaissance painter, late Renaissance painter, he was a Hapsburg court painter, the second Hapsburg emperor, and he did, I went round it yesterday, and it is interesting, but at the same time I find something very decadent about this kind of art, because he's the guy who did, I'm sure you've seen reproductions of the work, he's the guy who did all of these heads. But they're made of vegetables, or of wands, or of firearms, or of anything. They're not actually human heads. They're kind of visual puns. They're elaborate visual puns. They're hinted portraits of the Emperor Rudolf II, but they're not actually the face. They're a still life with all sorts of assorted fruit.

1:05:00 So he's got grapes for his eyes, and a bulbous pear for his nose, and a cucumber for his mouth. Oh, even for Rudolf. Of course, the one for Rudolf was designed to be... Fairly flattering. As flattering as you can make it when he's depicting the guy as a... Literally it's a fruitcake. But all of his paintings are still lives with, exactly, they're dead animals, or fish, or birds, and they're made into the form of human faces. Well, I'm glad you think that, because I think it's rather disgusting too. It's technically brilliant, but it's technically brilliant the same way somebody writes an entire novel without using the letter E. Now I understand better, Vandenberg is one of Vandenberg's threats. If we don't, you know, what he calls category land, if category land does not agree, you know, to give him all credit and so forth, he's going to expose us to a much wider circle, a much more important circle, namely through Jacques Roubault. These people are much more important in the world than we are, and he's going to expose it through Bebeau. Bebeau is very mad about this. Probably his only master's in mathematical publication. Oh dear, oh dear. I'm sorry to learn that he's gone like that. But that kind of artistic decadence, whether it's in the form of the novel or the Arquimboldo's, you know, Mannerist paintings, and there is something that seems to be very decadent about it, because it's just using a great gift, in the case of Arquimboldo, clearly found some very talented painter, just to do what? To make an elaborate pun. You know. This is not great art, but it's interesting that Benabou is an admirer. I didn't know that he was a friend of one of the guys who had written the novel about these. Yeah, he bragged about all that. I learned all this from his attacking Beck and all of that, but I recognize him as saying that, saying indeed that Boubot is going to be... It's extremely apparent that he, that he of course as a member of the category community is much more rational and reasonable, but Dubois was really incensed and he's going to tell the world and we're going to be discrediting him, so... Ah, sad. Well, very sad.

1:07:30 Um, well, Colin told me this story. I'm glad you told me this. I didn't know about it. So this thing is sort of being promoted at the moment. I mean, it's existed, but it's... Well, this particular artist is being, is the subject, is this particular artist, no, no, no, this artist lived in the 16th century, no, but it's just, he just strikes me that there's a striking coincidence between that kind of literary decadence, you know, decadent mannerism, I mean, they're both perfect examples of decadent mannerist art, you know, one guy writes a novel without using literary, the other guy paints portraits which are actually, you know, dead animals or flowers or fishes. The fruit, you know, rather than phases. That was the only parallel. This was also the reason I couldn't stand this book that Max Dickmann wanted me to translate, this book about the Ruanda Massacre, because the guy was just turning the thing into a pretext for some kind of eerie, fairy-arty, faulty lecture on aesthetics, and these were photographs of murdered men, women, and children. We did, of course, for the history of category theory meeting which we had here, go into some of the history, and I realized then that what Benabu was saying is just not true. Well, actually, I didn't point out the conclusion that I just said. Peter, who could have put this stuff together, but it's the same thing with private category, you see. I told him, I told him about it, and there was the Perugia notes and so forth, which he claims now not to, but I know that he got a copy of it, and the next year he was lecturing on private category. I gave it to him in 73 and 74 he was lecturing, and then later he published it, but again, to say that he just stole it is, I don't make that kind of accusation publicly. Well, he didn't publish the hybrid category stuff until 1980, did he? That's right. That was in JSL. That's right. And, of course, he regards that as the most important paper ever published in category theory.

1:10:00 So I told Martin, since Beck is dead, we have to defend him. Yes. Because we are his heirs and so on. Even though he was crazy. Well, that's part of his life as well. Well, she was at this Nancy meeting, of course, where Paul Taylor went, you know, really went for Benaboo in a very, very aggressive way, and she was particularly upset because I was actually sitting next to her in the audience, and... You know, Benabu was doing his, you know, I'm afraid of a man getting out the onion bit, you know, and, you know, like, and, I mean, I have to say, Paul Taylor is his own worst enemy, because even when he's fighting on the right side, you know, in the right cause, I'm afraid he doesn't do any good for the cause, and tends to damage it because he is so aggressive and so screwed up for his own personal reasons, because, you know, he's had problems getting a job, which, again, I hate to say, has been largely his own fault.