A friend read me Gottlob Frege's letter to Bertrand Russell, 1902 today. It is a masterpiece of gracious understatement. Frege was about to publish the second volume of his life's work when Russell sent him a letter describing what later became known as 'Russell's paradox'; a concept that destroyed the foundations on which Frege had based his work.
Frege starts his reply to Russell in a chatty way, casually mentions the theory in the middle of the letter, gently accepting the point and agrees to add an appendix to his book. Frege's intellectual honesty and impartial judgement reflect the attitude Kipling described in his famous poem If:
"If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss..."
I have recently been reading a more well known masterpiece: the Aphorisms from the beginning of Francis Bacon's "Novum Organum." I believe aphorisms are a neglected form. Bacon is pointing out that we are all idiots, nobody knows anything really but the problem is that we think we do. If only we could forget what we think we know, and concentrate on examining what is going on in front of our very eyes, we might learn something after all.
Frege starts his reply to Russell in a chatty way, casually mentions the theory in the middle of the letter, gently accepting the point and agrees to add an appendix to his book. Frege's intellectual honesty and impartial judgement reflect the attitude Kipling described in his famous poem If:
"If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss..."
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