A wide-ranging essay linking 18th-century politics and mathematics!

[septimus]

I just read a fascinating account of 18th century politics, philosophy, romantic intrigues, and mathematical physics. I thought of posting in Cafe Society: This long essay touches on a variety of topics as well as mathematics and physics. (Some will want to skim the math; others will want to skim the political intrigues.) It offers perspective on the Newton vs Leibniz controversy, e.g. explaining why Voltaire wanted to ridicule Leibniz with Pangloss’ “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”

Here’s a brief excerpt showing how deep the essay goes into personal intricacies:

Maupertuis and Clairaut … were joined by Francesco Algarotti, a 22-year-old Venetian playboy … [Later] Algarotti was quickly made a member of the Royal Society, despite his lack of any apparent qualifications. He had arrived with letters of introduction by Voltaire. His major contacts in London seem to have been Lord John Hervey and Mary Wortley Montagu, both lovers of his - and, for that matter, of each other. (The permutations and combinations of these three somehow make the “Three-Body Problem” seem eminently solvable!)

Not only does the essay mention the great mathematicians of that era, but it mentions Richelieu, Voltaire, Bach, and Benj. Franklin.

The title of the essay is “The Courage of Gauss: A Case Study of the Best of All Possible Worlds.” Gauss wasn’t even born during the events described in the essay but the essayist regards Gauss as the great genius-hero who finally rescued Europe from Maupertuis’ intrigues by restoring attention to Leibnizian truths!

The essay is a very dense 33 pages; I’m going to print it off and reread it before I can discuss it properly. I’m posting this here to ask for opinions: Is the essay fun to read? Enlightening? Valid? The author—David Shavin—doesn’t seem to even have a Wikipedia page; Who is he?

[bonzer]

@septimus

The author—David Shavin—doesn’t seem to even have a Wikipedia page; Who is he?

A long-time activist on behalf of Lyndon LaRouche. If the site hosting the article didn’t make you twig, a couple of fawning footnotes in it probably should have.

[septimus]

:smack: I’d forgotten the name LaRouche, of whom I’d only vaguely heard, decades ago.

But let’s not reject an interesting or valid message just because the messenger is a pimp or a loon!

[Kimstu]

@septimus

:smack: I’d forgotten the name LaRouche, of whom I’d only vaguely heard, decades ago.

But let’s not reject an interesting or valid message just because the messenger is a pimp or a loon!

Admittedly the LYM have provided some useful translations and analyses of important works in early modern mathematical sciences. However, their historiographic approach is weirdly locked into an idea of LaRouche’s that he termed the “Narrow Path”

of the original scientific discoveries which created modern science, and the application of this unique methodological understanding to frontier challenges in science and physical economics. This included research teams reworking key discoveries of Nicholas of Cusa, Johannes Kepler, Pierre de Fermat, Gottfried Leibniz, Carl Gauss, Bernard Riemann, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Vladimir Vernadsky, and Lyndon LaRouche, and producing of a series of pedagogical websites, designed to aid in the re-experiencing of the original discoveries of these great minds.

As you can see in the OP’s linked article, the primary characteristic of this historiography is to elevate this particular subset of important thinkers to semidivine status while demonizing any of their colleagues, rivals or successors who disagreed with them or criticized them about anything. A few sentences from the second page of that article should reveal the peculiar nature of this approach:

At the core of all the operations against Leibniz in the 18th-century, and also today, is the appeal to the “little me.” Typically, as in the calculus, the unexamined image of the “little me” is at the core of axiomatic misconceptions of discreteness and continuity. When the teacher suggests to the class that the discrete, particular thing can be made as small as one would ever care to make anything, the pupils are as helpless to defeat this ruse as they are able to explain at that point in their lives how one lone person can and should change the whole world. There is an unstated appeal to everyone’s presumed dirty little secret - that we are all such discrete particular things that have no lawful relationship to the whole, to be swallowed up in the endless infinity of time. […]

However, Leibniz’s conception of the “monad” boldly demands, to begin with, that the dynamics and the analysis of the world be coherent with the existence of the particularity of humans. That humans can transform the mode of creating and maintaining humans, that they do change their world qualitatively, is a characteristic of a happily-rich particularity that cannot be expunged from scientific investigations.

And this applies not only to humans, but also to the intentional characteristics of planetary orbits of the solar system, that insist upon carving out equal areas, and so define time. It applies to refracted light moving through a differentiated media (e.g., from air into water) according to ‘least-time’ considerations; to the co-ordinated growth and movement of the Crab Nebula; etc. There is no singularity of any substantial interest that does not reflect lawful characteristics of the whole. And so, man is said to be made in the image of God. […]

It is the ‘modus operandi’ of those assigned to subvert Leibniz – Newton’s controller, Conti, and the controller of d’Alembert and Euler, Maupertuis – to attempt to disorient humans, by obscuring the moral mooring of the good. When a particularity is induced to believe that he or she is just managing their career choices – purportedly making objective observations, and then summing up the possible pleasures or pains impinging upon their feelings – then one can be sure that such a particularity will be confounded by universality, and will surely panic on their final exam.

Is that a load of paranoid speculative gibberish, or are you merely failing to grasp its insightful profundity? I know which way I’d vote.

[David_Shavin]

A friend ran across the above exchange, found it somewhat laughable, and called it to my attention. It does appear a curious dialogue.

It appears that:
a) an initial fascination with my article indicated a re-reading may be helpful to discuss it properly; and then
b) the boogie-man “LaRouche” was invoked (even though, I must admit, I don’t know what it is to “twig”); which prompted
c) the defense that the article be taken seriously, at the inexpensive price of classifying me as “a pimp or a loon”; ending with
d) a citation from the introduction (properly making a general outline, to be developed in the body of the work) which is judged “a load of paranoid speculative gibberish”.

Perhaps before going back to step a), a perusal of “U.S.A. vs. Lyndon LaRouche: He’s a Bad Guy, But We Can’t Say Why” will help deal with the nervousness that interrupts a proper discussion. Perhaps not. Good luck.

[Covfefe]

Wow. Just wow.