Discussions, incl. FW Lawvere, M Wright

0:00 I recall people like Alex Teller and John Isbell. There were only three or four people who were active at all then. They did publish. I don't quite know what he means. Well, I should be... There was a paucity of publications because there was a... Because there were positive people working in the theatre? I think so. I'll go back and check exactly what he says. I don't want to... There were tons of algebraic topologists who used category theory more and more, but he must have been... I think he's aware of them. Yes, I think it's perhaps he... None of them are actually doing category theory. They're doing category theory directly. I think he's... Well, I'm just trying to figure out the answer. No, no, no. This is just my top of the head reaction. It is more in the context of people using categorical methods in algebraic topology that he's saying that fails. He may be referring just very specifically to one short... I'll go back and check. Peter Pryde, in the late 50s, claims that he did work as 163, of course, and this year, the first big international conference, the first category theory meeting at all, a little dinner here to commemorate it, we must be very close to the fifth, this was the one which Grotendieck attended, no, I'm wrong about it, because there's a reference in your Como survey paper on the history,

2:30 So it was another occasion that Graydon Deak was at La Jolla. No. Verdier was at the La Jolla meeting. No, I know it was Verdier. Never came to that meeting. At any meeting that I've ever been to. You must remember that, which is shocking because that's very bad. Go back and re-read your 1990 KOMO survey paper carefully. It's strange because I was reading it quite carefully the other day, but at some point I thought you had referred to Grothendieck, giving an exposition of topos theory. Ah, I'm sorry, I completely misremembered. It was a very memorable occasion. On the beach. We brought a blackboard. I'm so sorry, I had misremembered it as Grothendieck's good and then I'd be positive it was very important. I imagine you had an apology. Yes, you did, indeed. That was one of the things I wanted to ask about. Verdi was very fortunate. He also gave a scheduled lecture, but this was not scheduled in kind of informal interest. But I'm ashamed rather of my response to the whole thing because at that particular moment I was still very much imbued with the kind of logician's point of view. So he started off at the blackboard on the beach looking at my concept of foundations that would have to be somehow constructive or pragmatic.

5:00 So then he defined Grotenbeek's toposis, he said, assuming we have sets and co-limits of sets and all this. And so I actually interrupted him, but this is not foundation, it's practical because you mentioned the category of sets, I didn't give it. There was another logician, the sort of thing people still say. They don't have the excuse that you had in 1965. I didn't have any excuse except for miseducation. There was another logician that completely agreed with me, namely Irvin Engler, just retired a year or so ago from the ETA. We would read with each other and in that way delayed the understanding by category theory. ...what Grotendieck's theory actually was probably for a year or two. Yeah, but you certainly didn't delay it for very long and you certainly more than made up for it. You'd even say, we found out today, we could even say the 40th anniversary of Ferdinand's, certainly was the first introduction to the category theory community of this. And he, you know, he did explain it partly but, you know, on his usual French, when he heard this objection he just... Thank you for watching. But, you know, I think that, to some extent, that community, the French algebraic geometers, are to blame as well, because they should have seen that it needed a good deal of patient exposition, this view of set theory, because it would be clearly unfamiliar. A community of that, a good deal of patient mathematicians probably tend to go in for, and that's a splendid exception.

7:30 A couple of months ago, in an American math society... The notice is very significant. So they had rather detailed, and during this they mentioned the word topos. Meanwhile, they had mathematical words that you may know.

10:00 But there were all the more obvious candidates that they turned to. The context of starting to write things again, namely this big manuscript, Pursuing Stacks, has received now an organized multi-notice. They understand that it exists, at least, and they use a few of the ingredients that Grotendieck authorized the use of, namely the Laverie element. So they mention the Laverie element quite often, but all the rest of it sometimes isn't. They treat it as a... they're doing homotopy. It's a kind of idealized interval. If it's connected, you can use it to true and false instead of zero and one to parametrize curves. This is how they use it, and how Grotendieck himself used it. They don't use much else of mathematics or physics value operations there, and it might even be connected. In fact, several of us were thinking, how can we possibly strike back at the notices?

12:30 We could write a, what is something else? Which is not an implausible thing because there's a new editor, Andy Magid, who is rather categorical. He worked on Galois theory of community of brains, and even has a joint paper with Aurelio Carboni. And I met him once. We consider him to be a more friendly editor than any in the past, so perhaps we can enter that exalted plane of the American Maths Society. But see, the exalted plane is absolutely dreadful that this sort of thing goes on. And this is just one example, but you could say this is just our particular field. But they've been systematically insulting the entire mathematical community for the last ten years, and they brag about it. So there's the January issue. This will take a while to sink in. The January issue is bragging about what a wonderful program they've had for the last ten years. Because ten years ago, the community was clearly demanding more expository articles. So they had a committee which said, we're going to respond to this need for more expository articles. So we have lots of articles that are called expository, but they will be absolutely required to not explain anything, as I put it. So then they describe how proud they are that the editor struggled with authors. The authors responded to this need for expository articles. And the editors, the particular editors who were originating and administering this policy, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, with the stated aim to remove all rigor.

15:00 What is mathematics without rigor, you know? It's unusable. So the authors were, you know, were sort of divided into I mean, in practice, it came out that some authors were so offended by this that they went away, they dropped their attempt to publish, and others reached some compromise within which maybe one or two precise definitions were given, even though there should have been ten, you know. Yes, but not enough to orient a beginner in the subject. Not enough. I mean, I don't remember any of these. You see, the thing is that Steve and I and other friends have been observing for the last yea many years that these expository articles were peculiarly useless. There's no way that a reader, if you didn't already know the subject... On the basis of that article, begin to investigate, begin to think about it, and so forth, because at the crucial point where mathematics calls for a precise definition, the editors had labored to excise it and replace it by some vague thing. And so, for ten years, you know, the actual stated, you know, we always knew that this was the policy in practice, but do I say, you know, it's once again approved. I think you're right to more and more to see how right analysis is. I don't say that everything is always a matter of coordinated conscious conspiracy, but there's far more coordinated conscious conspiracy operates than I had naively believed. So it was my political understanding of 20 years ago, far more. I do realize that. ...and many different levels. ...any country where you can find...

17:30 Well, we'll only have to see... I don't think I'm exaggerating. I mean, I... See, now we're talking about things... ...mathematicians... Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes, I... ...mathematicians... Yes, obviously members of the community with sufficient mathematical understanding to grasp... ...can achieve this degree of completeness without... ...one's own existence. Quite astonishing that... You may have missed it, but I've looked very hard and not been able to find any evidence of it, that nobody in 15 years now since has taken up the level of general exposition of the, at this point, you know, the unity of what you'd term SUD objects, separated, ramified, and decidable objects, you know, in connection with, and, you know, if you're going to start an explanation of where the, between the development, the line of development.

20:00 The theory, the elementary theory, the connections between those developments, that would be the obvious, certainly one claim. One theory, what I was talking about. No, I didn't, I was only there for your first two talks. Fortunately, I think you recorded all of that, so I'm... There's an SUD... You call it quotient-decidable. Quotient-decidable, or separable. Now he's got a different name because it's locally-decidable. Anyway, it's almost the same. It's simply to emphasize the fact that if you pass two objects over a given number, then they pass through a decondition. What that means is basically this vision that has it there for the topos, because I know it's still more general than that, which was also a pedagogic device to make the point about what I pointed out, if I ever pointed out, actually, that category is so epic.

22:30 Decisive, Decisive, Decisive, Decisive, Decisive, Decisive, Decisive.

25:00 ...separable, undecided, and decidable, which means it's less of a really different, in other conditions, it's kind of a cancellation of the two maps, the maps into the diagonal, the co-domain, if the diagonal splits off, you know, and on the other hand, diagonal versus that, and the domain, by assumption as to connect it up, you can't be split. Yeah, split into the decidability. Therefore, the two maps, either they're different, and in the case of... You know, the possible further generalization, a more general determination of category of spaces, the idea that the distinction between the growth, one would not, more general condition than, well, I suppose, and I made some notes, but I had also, I had, as the very illustration, visited on to Descartes, this is, they were often used, also went and tracked them, I wish, no, no, no, it wasn't that, it was a very enjoyable job, and I wish I could get a few more like it, but, no, no, I, it was enjoyable, no, it wasn't particularly lucrative.

45:00 It gave me just enough to pay the bills for a month and to put something towards this meeting, just a small one. More in August and September when I finally began trying to negotiate a mortgage on this place just to give me a breathing space. I was completely unencumbered and I didn't want to have to do that but unfortunately I got landed with a very substantial tax bill from the... as a result of selling my... because the market moved up of course.

47:30 See, I don't know if that works in the US, but if it's your own residence, then you don't usually pay in capital. Well, only one of them was my prison. Well, even though I've had it Monday evening, that place is usually open. It's obviously not going to be tonight, though. The little Indian place up there, it's a very nice guy. Well, there's a Chinese place just further on. And if you go right to the top of the hill, there's a little Italian place on the left. No, I really got caught, I'm afraid. No, that's very picturesque. Picturesque 19th century reconstruction, not the genuine original roof. I think VLA Le Duc or one of those people decided to pretty it up and make it into a... But the castle's pretty genuine. I mean, the actual crenellations, the battlements, those were restored in the early 20th century, but the structure of the walls is still... No, the British tax authorities are pretty good. They do give you, if you're caught in that situation and you genuinely don't have resources, they will give you time to pay. But of course it does wrap up. I paid off about £20,000 of it so far. Well, the total came to £56,000, which was pretty horrifying because I was assured that the most it could come to was about £14,000.

50:00 This is the place. This is probably as good as anywhere. Try the Indian place? Yeah. Okay. Very well beaten. Oh, undoubtedly. I would have done it. I was really lumbered. It was so stupid. Hello. Bonsoir. Très bien. Mon ami Bill O'Veer. It's a good place, actually. It's very, very reasonable. Nice and light. It's that he could have, he should have known about, like, if I had sold the three... I've lived in apartments in three separate tax years. I would have had only a fraction of that and there were various reliefs that I could have claimed, you know, for money that was spent on the apartments, some of which were claimed but a lot of which were not, and by the time I learnt all this it was out of time. It was too late to put in an appeal on it. I'm in principle, the rich of course make a point of not doing so, but at the moment I'm trying to negotiate a mortgage on... This place is a small one. I mean, only about 10% of the capital market is very developed, you know, as if they ought to. But they are in fact developed by comparison with the UK to release mortgage in France. You only borrow against your property if you're going to buy a new property or if you're actually going to do work to convert that property.

52:30 This is partly because of the very paternalistic attitude that they have had ever since the Cote d'Apollon, which obviously devised by the wise emperor for the foolish peasantry, to prevent the pater familias from mortgaging the family farm and drinking away the profits and not having anything to leave to the kids. So they make it very difficult indeed to borrow and get your assets in France. Hence George Bush's, or other George Bush's, scriptwriter, his famous remarkable French language has no word for entrepreneur. He actually said that! I know! Yes, yes, it's wonderful. One of his better valentines, you know. I have, and it's very good. And the other one I've tried is the Fondus book, which is a little milder, but of course you can, you know... Yeah, Veronica was good. I was thinking of having that for the Shaheen. Well, it's terrific that the summer schools are such a success, such a stimulus both ways. I'm looking forward enormously to listening to those recordings that Davidi made, especially the one you were just telling me about now.

55:00 There was one young man there, he was Steve Aldi's student, a young Japanese guy, extremely good, meticulous. ...everything and I'm going to write to him and ask him if I can hack off those as well. Unfortunately at the back it was very difficult. The board, the lower part of the board. And if I can say it in the friendliest way possible, neither you nor Peter Fry have the most legible writing knowledge. It's probably my eyes actually. Before I think it's more a question of my needing. I got everything from, you know, the top half. I got the Dirichlet Thomas, that was very nice. Oh, you liked that? The six adjoint functors. Remember the joke you made about, you'd have a conversation with Peter Johnstone about three times two is six? Yeah. We didn't have any four of these. They're non-trivial. Oh, I know what it is. You know, there's this concept of a closed category, which just has an internal hom functor. To explain that it really is an internal HOM, you have to have some sort of natural transformation from the HOM of the HOM into the HOM of the HOM. The nature of that transformation is easily explained if you assume that HOM is a natural HOM. It's just the fact that this product is associative, really, more transparent. But Eilenberg and Kelly explicitly... If you've worked out the case where you don't have that adjoint, everything can be expressed in terms of these things of mixed variance and purely the higher types. Does there exist an example where it's closed?

57:30 Not so long ago, 40 years ago in this moment. Take the category of all finite sets. Sets of all sizes except six. Because it contains two and three and it doesn't contain two times three. It's under exponentiation. The number six never occurs as B to the power A, so it's closed under exponential... So it's closed, but it's not monoidal first. So that's the origin of the six. I was reading a little bit about closed categories actually in a survey article in the... That was a very general, he doesn't mention that, but not monoidal. Fascinating little place. The place itself, of Verdure, was a fascinating little... And that was a wonderful... Incredibly rustic.

1:00:00 That, it wasn't a pig's... It's quite luxurious. It's luxurious compared to... Yes, I say again, I'm afraid you're going to have to go to the decompression chamber on that in the next week. I sleep in one of the other rooms upstairs, let me know. I'm going to show you that. It is amusing so that I'm not being able to use the wash basin. I'm so annoyed about that. There's one thing on the practical side. If tomorrow after we go and get the car, you give me a hand getting the beds up. I've got all the beds in. ...the last three days. But they're still broken down. Well, not all of them, but... The things upstairs? No, no, no, no, no, no. Those are shelves. That's shelving. Yes, sure. Yes, please. Merci. I'd recommend having the fill-out peas, pilau, rice with that. It's very good. Good. I would have some, you'll want some rice, won't you? Yes. What kind would you like? The one that you. Okay, the peas pilar. And then a peas pilar rice, you see. What about some naan bread, would you like that? Sure. Okay. On its own or with the cheese, they have three different kinds. They have plain naan, they have keema naan, which is with the meat filling, and they have the naano fromage, which is.

1:02:30 Well, shall we have one kimonade and one nano fromage, and then you can decide which you like best, okay, and then I'll have the other one. One nano fromage and one kimonade, and for me, the poulet chaque. Pour un boisson... Ah, okay. He's given me the one without the wine. Oh, well, I'm not going to go crazy, but we had something at lunchtime, didn't we? But shall we have a bottle of the white between the two of us? Yeah, the Sauvignon should go quite nicely with that. ...of the French-India, French-speaking India, to substantial or Pondicherry is the name, which until fairly recently, barely negotiated accession, I think it was the 17th, which got the message after the Indians kicked Portuguese colonialists out of Goa in 62, from the message that initially they never, I hope something useful for you, useful in that respect may come out in the next week or so.

1:05:00 We had a conversation here with Cartier. Yes, I've given a lecture last, not that I got any funding or anything, but I found out that there was a Oaxaca, and since we go to Oaxaca, I thought, why should I not? There's actually a meeting called JAMEX, Joint Japanese-Mexican General Topology, and I got a nice plaque for those people who...

1:07:30 For those people who had printed up such and such, a professor has participated in this meeting and given a written title and such and so, so there's a stack of these words already prepared. After you've actually given the lecture, then you can go and, you know, if you're ready for it, you hang it around your neck and you make a treat hoping that people will give you ours. No, no, no, no, I'm really in danger with a place like Oaxaca, that you could go and, you could just go on holiday and pretend that you were attending a meeting. Yes, I remember you telling me about that. I still wanted questions on what you'd ask about that talk. And then the Vancouver meeting was on... Substance and precisely instead of the existence of an object as one component in two points, every conceivable thing, homotopy theory and so on, two values are connected. Every space can be embedded in even a contractible object, factorially and naturally.

1:10:00 There's a different existence of one space with two distinct points and one component, so that's good, that's what I call cohesion. I distinguish between category of spaces means that pi zero preserves product, but among the, I call gamma shriek, preserves product. But among those, there are these two cases, actually all the adjuvants collapse to two, which means gamma shriek preserves all of them, that's what I call quality. And the other one is where the truth-value object is connected, and the fact that we can extract the extensive quality or the intensive quality from a category of space is negating, but on the other hand it's negating in the philosophical sense that we take the thing and change it into something else. Yes, yes, it's negating, it's transforming. We're really glad when I discovered hot and cold adjoining. Quite a good notation, I think. The thing is, if you're dealing with a lot of these things simultaneously, with only that notation, you forget the pictorial significance. You can easily confuse left and right. Yes, sometimes hard to keep track of. ...just in the original thing, and then we have one more... Yes, it does become very difficult to keep track of. ...like Sri Arvind playing his piano.

1:12:30 Do you remember, you didn't, did you not, you didn't go to that talk, or go and get the talk about... The triads, Mazzola. It's almost, it's almost, but I actually know the basics of this tendency to rapidly invent speculative. I'd be happy to do that, but then when I learn about music theory, I don't know if I'm a little suspicious of these people because they, you know, they're in that network. Well, he's got involved with this meeting in October now, largely because I have it somewhere. I decided to have it in there because I can't carry an administratively easy to have it in there. I've been saying the last couple of months about that, running around, telling everyone it's his meeting, not as long as I'm the one signing the cheques, mate, to put it bluntly.

1:15:00 But I hope it'll be a worthwhile meeting all the same. I'm very sorry you're not able to come to it now, but I understand the personal reasons why you didn't do it. I won't press you on that, because I realise there must be a very personal nature of it. I'm just sorry that you won't be over here in October with Alberto. Alberto, I have invited to meet him, yes, he said he'd give a talk. So, Benabu Akati, of course, as long as we can keep it at that level. ...to invite him. And some people who I think, you know, are from... Thank you, merci. ...Ready Guitar, who are... But I'm just worried about the whole thing becoming... Yes, it was very strange what he was doing. That wasn't, that wasn't the reason that you... I made the mistake of inviting him to this meeting in November, last November here, with this guy, this guy, and again, there you are, be my guest, go ahead, save some for yourself, but then when the general discussion is not only just completely wild speculation.

1:17:30 To a successful, scientifically productive meeting. Atiyah, very good health. ...science publishers, near-death experiences, I just couldn't believe it. They've done something very interesting.

1:22:30 And I have the suspicion after listening to Pavlov that they probably wrote his papers for him as well. I've seen him close up here. I had hoped there might be something serious there. Taking the seriousness of what the other people have. And it turned out... In fact, it's even crazier than I thought. He's into the woozier end of Egyptology, you know, sort of deciphering the numerical numerology of the Great Pyramid. He's completely out of the bosom of Moscow. It's all mob money.

1:25:00 Yes, I was thinking very seriously about what you said the other evening about the state of the Communist Party of Canada, A very deep trough between historic epochs and one where capitalism appears to be consolidating, preparing deep developments in methods of production. Is it tactically right to take support wherever you can get it, or is it not? Well, I'd use a nicer analogy. Yeah, well, you were much more principled. I hope so, because, well, anyway... He talks rubbish about identity. It was striking that Mary Smith, Blaydon, it's better if you don't use Tufts theory at all, you should use formal ontology, don't think about this, think about this and the other thing, and see does anyone do that before they talk? Well he does. Except maybe a Catholic priest does that, right?

1:27:30 Yes, he is, he does, he, as I say, gives these very general talks on character and philosophy and all that superior, but I'm nothing but... But then I had to run down, run down, and I said, well, okay, maybe he'll actually learn it. Then he wrote to me several times, in the last report, using conceptual math as a text. Well, I think his, you know, his motives at least at that point stand what I'm listening to. As a person. Yeah. I mean, because when he came to Buffalo, he was quite a total sloth. Yes, I don't understand. These ideas of each. Each? Yeah. And he keeps going on. I mean, he published a paper, well, he didn't publish it, no, he submitted a paper, which he showed to me, which I thought, I just couldn't bring myself to say how bad it was, which was going on about the categories of atonement and sin, without having to think for very long, in 17 different ways. No, it's completely ignoring the, I mean, the different senses in which you could, there are so many different senses in which, this totally sort of essentialist platonic determination.

1:30:00 There's also a great deal about how Plato understood everything that there is in category theory. It's a good deal to be safe, right? Within the aristocratic section of the ruling class, but specifically within that section of the ruling class that had acted as Quisling on behalf of the Spartans after Athens was defeated. The rule of the 30, when the oligarchy was set up, the Alberta saw through it as far better antennae, because he hadn't really seriously...

1:32:30 Speaking of further vestibality, the disease controlled that. He laid out, you know, he announced it, add forward to doing that job.

1:35:00 It's something which ought to have been... The structure of it was, no one dared stop him. It was absolutely painful and embarrassing, all the same. You can even see this on the web, there is a Kozlowski... There's lots of photos from the Vandiver meetings. There's a sequence of five just showing Audi doing this and Peter coming up and accepting this piece. It's all very painful. I don't know. I mean, I just don't know Steve Audi. He probably has deep personal inadequacies which he conceals.

1:37:30 People and I, you seem to me to be very, very depressed when I just wonder whether we have judgmental or maybe personal problems there. He keeps getting the message that what he's doing is qualitatively less interesting. Well, even I got that. The knowledge of mathematics is practically nil. You know, seemingly in contradiction with the fact that Saunders McLean's a student. Saunders McLean's the last student, which is special. Really, it's more accurate to say that he was the student of the disciplinary system at Chicago. McLean was the math, but it's overwhelmingly philosophy. Yeah, he mainly publishes in philosophy. He's in philosophy department, he's mainly, yes. Some simple example, algebra or topology, he simply doesn't know anything about it, and he doesn't try to advance his knowledge. I mean, I, I, I mean, I, I totally laugh. Instead of trying to develop the buzzwords together, not really...

1:40:00 Maybe that's why he feels good about security, that he knows in his heart, that's what he's doing. If you just actually learn and get a part of some, any branch of mathematics, I'd love to look on the web. He has a brother. He has this internationally famous philosopher as a brother. Poetry, which I would describe as fascist poetry. Oh, he writes it. He mentioned about this. He mentioned this, Karas, and I was wondering whether it was a relation. No, he didn't mention that he is the grandson. It's the same. It's the same people. One shouldn't forget Hegler, who was the father of his daughter.

1:42:30 It certainly deserves, it certainly deserves this common knowledge. But obviously no one like me has seriously studied that variation for the last 30 years. Looking forward to the centenary of... No, I... But there's such a vast amount of... Yeah, so what I wanted, yeah, in the... The journal called Historia Mathematica, there's been a very big article just about Coleman, and because he's described as a Stalin, you know, the one who represented the Stalinist line on mathematics, one has to somehow, well, I've always thought that he was a very pernicious influence, because all of the, well, leftists are, you know, actually mostly re-business, but people who wanted to... People of some sort of communist orientation who wanted to talk about the material basis of history, mathematics in particular, they always referred to that. There's one paper presented in 1931 in London, Science at the Crossroads. So first of all, Gosso Modo, instead of calling this the stall on the slide, would have to see that it's Bukhar on the slide. I'm sorry, who is this guy again? Coleman. Coleman. I'm sorry, I'm afraid, I'm sorry. He's transliterated in various ways, K-O-L-M, or even just Coleman.

1:45:00 No, no, he is. He was a German mathematician? No, not German. Sorry, from the name of... Actually, Czech. Czech, okay. I'm sorry, I'm afraid... But he spent more career in the Soviet Union. I'm sorry for my ignorance. So I do know about that because there's a character called Christopher Caldwell who spoke with it. That's right. And I do know about Caldwell. Caldwell who realized that what you're talking about is actually Bertrand Russell. Oh, right. He's the subject of our series. Fantastic. That's right. Because I know about the 19th century. It had a certain positive effect just because of taking along the... But it was profoundly mistaken about, I think, about the true nature of the relationship between the productive forces and the development of science. And because of that, in particular... About mathematics, so probably the most interesting article in there is the one by Coleman on mathematics. Well, I mustn't read it. Stop it. Yeah, that's what I proposed. You didn't know about that. No, I'm sorry. No, no, but the thing is, he's often cited. I should have thought that. He's always cited. In his later life, he actually came together with Dirk Struik. Oh, him, yes. I'm sure the Marxist guy who moved to mathematics. You know, somehow the U.S. is so backward. Yes, these people are able to impose themselves. If somebody is, quote, communist, unquote, be a Marxist hero, even if he's suspended with pay, I mean, it's kind of, it gave him more time to develop his business line. No, this is literally the case. And of course Van Heijenoort, the other one, who was Trotsky's secretary, chair in the American... I met him. Did you? I lectured at Tufts University. Yeah?

1:47:30 And he showed up and he introduced himself. I am Van Heijenoort. Of course, his name I knew from... But the first thing he said was... The first thing he said was... Sir, this is his name. Very interesting. You don't claim that he sailed under false colors, do you? No, not at all, not at all, not at all. That's quite ridiculous. ...versus Neverland's wife, who wrote this book about him. Yes, I do, I do. I've read the book, I'm quite sure. You've read it yourself? I've read the book, yeah. So he was claiming, you see, after Trotsky's... Part of the illustration of what you said about the kind of leftists who think that just because somebody was Trotsky... After Trotsky's exploration... Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was, of course, in Mexico City at the time, and claims to have also been a lover of Peter Cullum, etc., etc., at least as Mrs. Fairfield-Hart writes. And the point I'm trying to make is he immediately claimed that he was now the leader of the fourth international, and so he was acting, supposedly, as the leader in Communicado. At the same time, in Communicado, he wrote for the Partisan Review, a journal. ... about how dialectic and materialism is totally false and mathematics proves that. Oh, just like Bertrand Russell. Yes. Influenced. Influenced. And influenced by the Trotskyites. Yes. Yes. His last personal servant was the... Oh, yes. There's, of course, the notorious... What the hell was his name, the guy? Schoenemann. Schoenemann, yes. Ralph Schoenemann. Yes, yes. First truth to that. Trotsky mentioned, I'm sorry, Russell mentioned in the Nobel Prize winning book, the main positive contribution of John Dewey was to rehabilitate...

1:50:00 Oh, this was to show that Trotsky was innocent on all charges. Yes, yes. The Michael Jackson of his time. I'm sorry. Just tell me more. Except the crossroads, mechanical, materialist ideas, he's claiming that, he didn't mention, I forget what it was. Trotskyism meets Benjamin Franklin, cyclic. Yes, I've met this before. For want of a stirrup, the integral was lost. For want of a stirrup, the integral, yes. As far as I can see, the brain. Two lecture series, which are just wonderful examples. But are not neither one mentioned. He had only a few weeks. This was the retreat of the revolution when he was in Switzerland. So during that time he studied philosophy. The greatest polymath in the world could hardly have been expected to know the details of, especially, you know, a Russian revolutionary in Switzerland, to know the details of things like the Gifford Lectures.

1:52:30 John Dewey and William James had grasped the trend of the new key examples, as noticed, or at least as Gifford and Silliman, I like to consider. Well, Gifford certainly knew all about mathematics. You must look at this, I mean, not too long. No, no, no, no, just enough to get the orientation. Both the Anglo-American side, sorry, in some sense, Ireland, you know. Is it possible to digest, perhaps, the Copartier? Pa and cal, the cal was a bit too far for me. An Armagnac, an Armagnac, okay. Was that even called Wattier? Was that even called Wattier? No, okay. Do Armagnac. Do Armagnac. That's a little smoother than Carniac. Anyway, a third example. I think it's just incredible, it's objective to say that the chieftain, even a world imperialist, was issuing direct... Ah, let me guess. Go ahead. And, of course, before he was Prime Minister. Before 1900, when he was... That's when he was Salisbury's son-in-law.

1:55:00 When he was a... One of the chief... I've said that, yeah, haven't I? He wrote two books. Oh, he did indeed. It's very important, Angler, Hegelian. Essentially, that skepticism is the road to a variant, or to say pragmatism is a variant on this... I think this is part of the old trend. Extremely interesting. Very interesting. There's an absolutely clear scientific analysis. I have a friend who wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Balfour. On Balfour's philosophy? Yeah, on Balfour's philosophy. But on Balfour's philosophy and its political significance. I could, but unfortunately I should tell you he's a reactionary. He's a progressive candidate. But it's very well informed as to who Fowler read and, you know, who he spoke to, and he kept a diary which has not ever been published in its entirety. No one understands the recurring paradigm, skepticism as the road to faith. ...more efficiently promotes faith, but it doesn't use the word skepticism. He says on page one, well, some people might use the word skepticism, but I'm calling it Tufts and Gallows. That's clearly what it is. But it means, okay, the words are slightly different, but I claim this is really how it is. I think that's absolutely accurate, and it's very, very clear. You know, he's seen the problem. ...religious position that's obviously posed by the huge advances of natural science in the 19th century. Yes, and he has a very carefully thought out strategy for how to counter this. Alpor actually gave two different lectures. One was the book you're talking about, published.

1:57:30 Which I think was published under two different titles, one in Britain and one in the United States, so it was published under a different title. And the second one, which I've forgotten, but that was much later, I think towards the end of his life, wasn't it? I think that was after... The second lecture. The second... I thought the two books were... No, no, I'm talking about the two sets of Gifford lectures. I think the second one was given a lot later, in about 1919 or so, towards the end of his life. He lived into about the mid-1920s, I think, or 1924, or 1925, or that sort of thing. He was a close relation by marriage to Lord Gilman, and somehow... That's very interesting, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but somehow... There was a little bit of debate about the second lecture, which also involved, I think it actually involved mental telepathy. Well, there was an awful lot of that going on in the physics in the time. People like, yes, well, I was thinking more of Sir Oliver Lodge and people like that, who was given, I discovered, an absolute roasting by Heaviside earlier in his career. Yes, well, Hemerside's always been one of my interests too, but it's, you know, basically, yeah, he showed that, there was some meeting of the British Association at which he just, because Hemerside has never straightened, the guy didn't understand Hamilton or Maxwell or anything, so it's not surprising that he later wandered off, well, okay, it was actually Conan Doyle who literally believed in Ferris, but Lodge was only one stage removed from that, he certainly believed in table rapping. Kelvin was forced to take a kind of agnostic position because of being a family member. You see, I just don't know enough about Kelvin. Kelvin had a very impressive correspondence with Stokes when he was a younger man. But what happened after he became a noble and a member of the establishment? He came from a relatively humble background.

2:00:00 He was a kind of poor scholar, and he went to Cambridge to Peterhouse at Rathmire College on a scholarship. But then, when he became Lord Kelvin, and was placed eventually at the Cardinal of Scotland, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he became very much a member of a conciliatory and, of course, there are some truths in all these. Yes, I should imagine. I don't know. I should know more about him. I never knew that he was related by marriage to Valpo, but I don't know. At the very beginning, he died in 19... No, no. ...Cohen. It was later than that, was it? Of course, it wasn't much later than that, I don't think. I think Kelvin died in... This was around 1915. Well, I'm sure Kelvin was dead well before that. So it must be somebody else. No, Kelvin's definitely dead well before 1914. I could be wrong. It's certainly one of the famous physicists. Wasn't one of those people like Jeans or... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no. It was somebody who I would have expected to be a little more serious. But I'm sure that Kelvin was dead before 1915, well before. I think he died around 1900, or maybe 1902, sometime like that. Well, it might have been, we can ask Google at home. Yeah, we do Google. I could be wrong. Well, I'm just going to Google down the road. I'm pretty certain that Kelvin had been dead for quite a long time, by 1915. Yes, yes, his second one was a long way off. I think his first one was about 1896, 1897, something like that, and his second one was about 1919. I may be wrong about the date of the first one. I'm pretty sure the second one was 1919. Because he gave it a year before Samuel Alexander.

2:02:30 ...gave them, I think in 1921, they were what became space, time, and deity, which was Samuel Alexander's contribution to objective idealism. Samuel Alexander was an extremely smart Australian Jew who went to Eton, the innermost sanctum of the Brajuri class, on a scholarship. But I know, as I say, I'm pretty sure that Balfour gave his second set of Gifford Lectures around 1919. But you're absolutely right, I mean, Balfour is a very, she was the chief editor of British Imperialism, and Salisbury's writing certainly had a... That was the highest materialist at the moment. Exactly. To say, excuse me, the world of British Imperialism. Yes, well, at that moment it had its apogee, too. And of course...