Discussions FW Lawvere — Grothendieck's 1973 Buffalo Memoir

0:00 Oh, hello, Bill. Did you not get the email I sent you a couple of days ago? Actually, I think it was yesterday, to be... No, no, I'm not so sure that's a joke these days. Oh, okay. Well, let me just pull it up very quickly. A meeting on differential geometry. Some, you know, some windbags, but some very good people. There was one extremely good series of historical talks covering pretty well the whole history of differential geometry from Grassman and Riemann through to Cartan. Which was very clear, and I certainly learned a lot from it, but the only problem was the guy who gave it seemed to think that nothing really had happened in differential geometry since Elie Kartan, that the whole subject since Elie Kartan had been more or less just a series of minor footnotes to his work. I don't think he even thought that Erisman was counted as a differential geometer. But what he did know, which as I say brought it up to the 1920s and 30s, he knew very well, and I certainly learned a great deal. ... about what all these great people like, you know, Levi Chibiter and all these other guys did, and why, you know, Cartan's achievement really is just so, so masterly. He was clearly one of the great, great figures in the history of mathematics. Very great figure. And there were some, there were some, there were some rather good and interesting talks, and it was interesting to see what's happening in Moscow. They've just about, you know, emerged from the period of being, you know, completely raped by, you know, seconding an extreme robber, Baron Katz. And Putin has obviously got around to expropriating the old expropriator, but only just because he has his own nationalist agenda. He's certainly popular with the people because he's perceived as having delivered them from the absolute horrors of what they went through in the Yeltsin years,

2:30 where there was actually mass starvation in many of the rural areas, and where Gaidar and his friends, before Berezovsky and co. started stripping the entire country of its assets, You know, according with the best advice from their mentors in the Chicago school, who managed to make the economy contract by about 60% in the space of a few weeks. And we all know it's the tooth fairy who told us that. The same tooth fairy that pays for wars, if you're a Republican. Yeah, again, tell me about it. Tell me about it. But it was an interesting experience. The downside is that the place has become very, very polluted, even in the last three years since I was there. Pollution is simply dreadful. Talking of pollution, how are you and Fatima? Have you recovered from that dreadful business of the... Absolutely dreadful, the thing to have gone through. I was going to say, you had to move out of the house completely. I suppose not, because of all of the pollutants in the atmosphere. I'm so sorry for what you've been put through.

5:00 It's unbelievable. These people have really got something to ask for. Of course it just absorbs so much time and energy though, doesn't it? Yes, I am. I think I could certainly put a value on it and say that it's completely beyond price, which makes me very angry. Oh my God. It must be just like when you have acute bronchial asthma.

7:30 Oh dear. I'll actually die, can't I say? I think I'd just put up with the lice if I was in their position. Of course, it naturally would be, because any of these contaminants is harmful to children in concentrations because of their body mass index. Other things, dare I say, it's like the policies of the American government. I mean, you know, a lot of people who profess to be... It's like all those people who marched against the war and ended absolutely nothing when it started. People just don't realize until they experience something like this what it is like. I mean, you know... Because they'll just dismiss you as a faddist or a faddist. I know, I know. It's sickening. I, thank God, have never actually experienced anything like this directly as a result of contamination with these. I did suffer from very, very acute bronchoasthma when I was young, when I was about seven or eight years old. I very nearly died of it. And I can still recall, even after, you know, best probably 50 years, and, you know, people, you know, people just dismiss it as if it was an attack of hay fever.

10:00 But, of course, it's not. It's much, much. It's really a life-threatening condition. Well, you've got one friend at least who does, nothing I can do except to say it, but, you know, I really do sympathize and understand a bit of what you must have been going through, but the position now is that you are able to live in the house with, I suppose it's like must or mold of a, you know, once it gets into the fabric of a building, it's, I mean, almost no amount of, we'll get rid of it. Well, unless you leave, and in Buffalo you can't leave your doors and windows open, you know, especially, it's getting pretty cold there by now. Oh, so you have been able to, you have been able, but again, unless you've got a lot of air going through the house, and even then it, you know, doesn't clear it. I mean, if these things are, you know, you've got contaminated surfaces. I mean, did they send anybody back in to try and, you know, to try and clean up the damage, or to minimum? Well, yes, of course, that's what... Next to the system. It must be safe, yeah.

12:30 That's what we, I mean, yes, it's called greenwash, all the, all the claps, you know, perfectly safe and natural. I'm pointing out about, radioactivity is, radioactivity is perfectly natural, you know. It must have been incredibly severe if you're still suffering this after, if those figures are correct, of course. I mean, I was going to say, the trouble with those is that the amount is very tiny, probably less than you've just simply spent on having to eat out, you know. We've certainly got, I would have thought, an extremely strong... That's the problem. Once you get involved in litigation against corporations, of course they have their highly paid lawyers who just do everything they can to delay and to wear you down. ...a lot, believe me, for your age, the way of you... Oh, it's actually on the web now, is it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, good. I mean, of course I listened... Yeah, well, of course I listened to most of that because I arranged for quite a lot of it to be recorded, if you remember. That young guy, Tim van der Linden, who was down there, the Belgian...

15:00 Oh, good! I know that they had some of the overheads, but I didn't realize they'd actually got some videos and stuff as well. Oh, good! I'll look at that. The last time I looked, I would love to have gotten to that. But at least I did get to hear Peter Johnson talking about the search for cohesion. The reason I'm particularly ringing you, this was in the email, of course, is to try and liaise with you about the final rundown to Boston. Now in the email there are a couple of things I wanted to let you know. One is that the University of Chicago Press approached me and said that they would be very interested in producing a volume around this conference. They won't use the word proceedings because apparently that's regarded as the kiss of death by all academic publishers these days. To produce a book on the general theme of what remains of the notion, the geometrical reality of space, to use Cartan's phrase, in 21st century mathematical understanding of geometry. And they would like to get a written up version, written up and perhaps expanded version, of your talk, Pierre Cartier's, and Crane's. But they also say, which I think is encouraging, that they would like to commission a preface over which you would have substantial editorial control, although they wouldn't actually commission you to write the whole thing yourself. Again, on the general theme of what remains of the geometrical reality of space in 21st century mathematics. Would you be interested? It sounds almost too good to be true to me, so I'm digging carefully into the background of this, but there's a series, yeah, I just, you know, again, I don't know how far one can generalize about the people, it all depends on the people who edit these particular series, not to mention what their economists have done for the world, but it may just be that there are people in the maths department who are not tainted with the same brush.

17:30 Anyway, I'll send you, I'll have to find out, the editor of the series, I know he's not, you know, he's not exactly in your list of most admirable people, it's Luke Kaufman, but does that necessarily, oh he's a bit weird, I agree, I learned quite a bit about knot theory from him, bracketed all the stuff about the Dalai Lama and all that, I mean it is possible to learn, you know. He certainly seems to think that a book about the subject of this conference would be that they would publish it so perhaps we could talk about that and certainly it would be great if it you know but especially if you could have editorial control of the preface as well as obviously of your own written up contribution and then the responses by Jean-Pierre and Colin and perhaps some of the roundtable discussion. It seems to me that it could be a very worthwhile project, provided that we can retain editorial control. This is what Kaufman is promising me, but as I say, I'd want to get it written in blood. But as I say, it sounded a little bit too good to be true to me, but I'll send you the inquiry that he sent to me. I think that it's something that we should think about. Now, the other thing I wanted to ask you is could you possibly, and I know with all the backlog that you must have, the more important work you've got to go through, is there any chance that you can let me have an abstract and a short title, you know, of what you propose, the talk that you propose to give?

20:00 Well, I realise you've got an awful lot of other things on your plate, but, exactly. It doesn't have to be more than, you know, a couple hundred words, but... Again, bearing in mind that the general theme is, you know, to honor the 50th anniversary of Grotendieck's Verhoeven lecture, and the philosophical orientation is, as I say, to this question, this issue of, you know, what remains of the notion of the geometric reality of space, a la Cartan, in late 21st century mathematics, which I think is probably a... Well, it wasn't even so much the physics literature that I was thinking of. It's... The other thing I was going to ask you is when are you coming, what are the dates that you're going to be in Paris for this meeting in honor of Christian Husserl? You told me the 22nd or the 23rd, but I wasn't quite sure. It's just a one-day meeting, is it? Because Pierre Cartier asked me, this again was in my email to you, Pierre Cartier asked me particularly to find out, because he wants to clear his schedule so as to have a couple of days if possible to talk with you after that meeting. Well, either before or after. He just wanted to know exactly when the meeting was going to be. So what day are you proposing to return to the USA? Do you actually have your ticket yet? That would give the 24th and the 25th, you know, for you and me and Cartier and maybe one or two others to have some useful conversation.

22:30 Cartier was wondering whether it might make sense for us to travel back with you to the States. ...just to be there a couple of days. I mean, we want you to get good rest in Buffalo. Bacardi's been invited to give a talk to the philosophy department at, I think at MIT, a couple of days before the meeting. So he might, it's just possible if you're going on the, well, you said you're probably going on the evening of the 25th. Yeah, I'll see how that works out. He was asking me about, yes, and besides, you'd want to see Fatima again. You can probably do, Once this wretched business of the pollutant is dead, you'd do better at home than in a hotel. But in spite of what the bloody, yes, their version of the Patriot, whatever it was called, the War Powers Act, wasn't it? The thing they used to... Yes, he's actually, he's a member of the Canadian Royal Society now.

25:00 Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, he's an FRCS, a fellow of the Royal, called Canadian Royal Society. Yeah, indeed, which of course is where I spent some time with you in 1993. I remember. It's supposed to be in Brussels for a meeting on the, I think on the 7th or the 8th of December, but to be honest, London, Ontario sounds much more interesting. I might try and stick around and come up there.