Post- session conversations: FW Lawvere

0:00 I'm actually a little bit fragile, but we're going to that now, I'm fine. I'm actually, I got your message and would love to be able to get there tonight, but can't because I'm attending another seminar in Paris. I am indeed, yes. I'm just about to go to hear Bill talk at the École Normale Supérieure. Yeah, well, in fact, I've just been with him for a week in Nancy, in Lorraine, at this, you know, I made that rather awful joke about the Nancy boys about a month or two back. Well, that's the thing I've been at. It's been extremely interesting, actually. Very, very, very interesting week. But I just wanted to say, you know, I'll certainly get along next week and hope that all is well with you. Lee, where were you talking in America? Yeah. Yes. Oh, yes, I know about Doerr. Oh, yeah, big hitters. Yes, so I suspect as I, yes, I've been getting the Bill Orville line on why Revelli is a bullshitter, but we're going to that now. I don't, I think he is, I think he is too. Well, no, he just doesn't like, he's got this big objection to the non-commutative geometry. But, which I understand much more clearly now than I did before. Yeah, I will, I think at last I can actually tell you where he's coming from. But the reason, I had a specific reason for ringing, apart from saying, you know, have a good time tonight, which is, is Keith there? So he won't be around for...

1:02:30 This bill, as it were, has just been produced here as an ornament, he's not actually supposed to speak to this guy. Yeah, I thought this guy, I mean, this guy... For 20 minutes, that's a good one. If he went for much longer, he'd start to leave.

1:05:00 Well, I could see, yes, I mean, a long-winded introduction, but never anything quite as... Yes, yes, I gathered you. I know this type of person. If you seek out sources, you write things down and you'll find automatic comparilations on McLean's comments, different commenters on that. It doesn't matter, most of his comments are shallow and repetitious. Very repetitious. Oh, he was just quoting endless chunks of... To show that he's done his homework. Well, it just consists of having read a few pages without really having understood very much. I don't know Italian at all well. I hear it all the time, you know. Say again. Historicism. Oh, historicismo. Historicismo. Historicismo, yes. Historicism. Yeah, yeah. It can mean, it has a narrow kind of technical sense in the history of architecture, just to mean buildings are built in deliberate imitations of some faster, faster style, but it's used in a much more general sense to mean... He wrote a very influential book called The Poverty of Historicism, and in his case it just meant any framework of ideas which provides a general understanding of general historical tendencies.

1:07:30 Which, in principle, is impossible, which is made by all that proof that we can never understand, although anybody who thinks they can is obviously irrational. Well, that's the only context in which I've come across the word as a general phenomenon. An incredible number of young people want to study philosophy. They're interested in philosophy. But what happens? They're diverted into this narrow history of philosophy. And also, of course, to avoid learning any science along the way, which wouldn't be relevant to any series. I'm not being scientific about it, but actually it means never taking a position. Yes, that's because of eclecticism. I've been seeing a case where this Garnet says, when he says that Gentile was the most important philosopher in the 20th century. It doesn't necessarily mean he agrees with it. It probably does. But it means that they've studied, they've carefully studied all the philosophical trends of the 20th century. It's like some American... He was the most influential. Hitler was the most influential dictator of the 20th century. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Or the most influential either. Whatever. Yeah, so I'm sure that... No, well, it may just mean, it may mean in the Italian usage, it may mean that just that narrow study of different historical schools.

1:10:00 Certainly, in Potter's case, it definitely did mean something more general and something of which he was... I've certainly had the impression that he spends an awful lot of time reading very general expository works about category theory, and I was never actually learning any of them, and those were memorised very carefully. Yes, your pointed remark was certainly not lost on me, I think it probably wasn't lost on you. Many people. On the other hand, he was just diplomatically enough trained not to be able to direct himself in a, you know, it was, you know, you left just enough room for interpretation. There are people. It was perfectly obvious. So I think he deserved it. But it was obviously a wonderful thought. And I don't know, last I think I was talking about provocation. A bit more about Horovitch. It was very interesting to meet Pierre Cartier. Oh, yes. Well, he was just three months then. Oh, gosh, yes. I mean, not the great man at all. Well, actually, we helped to draw him out. Well, that was very nice. I mean, you know. Yeah. I mean, I wish I could have... I'm not capable of drawing him out on his mathematics. I'm sure you would have preferred to have talked to him about that. He seems a very... No, I think he's probably... No, he's probably got some idea. Oh, it was very interesting hearing him talk.

1:12:30 Thank you for your attention. Well, I don't want to drag you too far, you know, I mean, well, we're almost at the Luxembourg Garn, yeah, that's right, well, that's where I was proposing, that's right, yeah, that was where I was proposing to do the Smith-Hart tomorrow, there isn't really anywhere doing the monologic things without talking about all those things, so we've got to do them, yeah, well, I've got the, it's actually, do you guys want to do it? This is an amazing thing. You should meet this chap sometime, Charles Madison. I know him a great deal actually, personally and in many other ways. I couldn't believe this was going to be here. I'm going to have to hand load it.

1:15:00 Oh, whatever it is. That's just the list of the websites. This is just a section of the Marxist archive, the very Marxist archive. It's a little difficult to see here. What's wrong with you? Do you care to do the play? Care to do the play? I don't. I don't like that. I don't like that. Exactly what? Exactly what? I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it. These are the main Marxist archives. These are Marxist websites, just specifically on the Tonga. These, unfortunately, I wasn't able to... I tried, but you can't in fact do it. Yeah. I don't know. Well, this would be in the collection of works. This would all be in the collection of works. I didn't notice it. This one I have seen, but I haven't read it.

1:17:30 But I wanted to pull those down. But I have put everything back in place, and yeah, this is when I was trying to get to his website, and I had a problem.