Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Spengler explains why A implies non-A

Jihadis do not blow themselves up in mosques and marketplaces because they study al-Ghazali instead of Aquinas, but because they think that death is preferable to life in an alien civilization. Not only jihadis kill themselves. No one better exemplifies a life dedicated to reason than Western mathematicians. Yet a mathematical puzzle elicits a different kind of thinking than the question, "Is my life worthwhile?"

2 comments:

Arelcao Akleos said...

Hardy killed himself? Did not know that.

Tecumseh said...

Hmmm... Wiki doesn't say. Here it says "cause of death: unspecified". Wiener says Hardy died of heart failure. But O'Connor and Robertson say that he attempted suicide a few months before he died:

By the time the war ended in 1945 Hardy health was failing fast. He longed to be creative again, for that was all that really mattered to him in life, but he knew that his creativity was gone and that he became very depressed. By 1946 he could only get around by taking taxi rides, a few steps would make him short of breath. In early summer of 1947 he tried to take his own life by taking a large dose of barbiturates. He took so many, however, that he was sick and survived.