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Nicolas Bourbaki, whose mathematical publications began to appear in the late 1930s and continued to be published through most of the twentieth century, was a direct product as well as a major force behind an important revolution that took place in the early decades of the twentieth century that completely changed Western culture. Pure mathematics, the area of Bourbaki's work, seems on the surface to be an abstract field of human study with no direct connection with the real world. In reality, however, it is closely intertwined with the general culture that surrounds it. Major developments in mathematics have often followed important trends in popular culture; developments in mathematics have acted as harbingers of change in the surrounding human culture. The seeds of change, the beginnings of the revolution that swept the Western world in the early decades of the twentieth century — both in mathematics and in other areas — were sown late in the previous century. This is the story both of Bourbaki and the world that created him in that time. It is the story of an elaborate intellectual joke — because Bourbaki, one of the foremost mathematicians of his day — never existed.
| 1 | The disappearance | 1 |
| 2 | An arrest in Finland | 17 |
| 3 | Escape | 37 |
| 4 | Arrival in Paris | 49 |
| 5 | The general and the zeitgeist | 61 |
| 6 | When Braque met Picasso | 71 |
| 7 | The cafe | 81 |
| 8 | The achievements of Bourbaki | 99 |
| 9 | Bourbaki's reign | 111 |
| 10 | Claude Levi-Strauss and the birth of structuralism | 129 |
| 11 | The linguistic origins | 149 |
| 12 | Structuralism in psychology, psychiatry, and economics | 161 |
| 13 | The literary group Oulipo | 173 |
| 14 | Alexandre Grothendieck and the IHES | 183 |
| 15 | The death of Bourbaki and his legacy | 203 |
drjaylee
Posted October 10, 2009
This story is one of the most fascinating ones I've read. The problem is that Aczel didn't organize it very well. It is almost as if he rushed through the telling of it just to get it off his desk. The pace is so variable. He runs through parts of the story while others drag on forever. Some parts are detailed others have little detail. Worth a read though.
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Overview
Nicolas Bourbaki, whose mathematical publications began to appear in the late 1930s and continued to be published through most of the twentieth century, was a direct product as well as a major force behind an important revolution that took place in the early decades of the twentieth century that completely changed Western culture. Pure mathematics, the area of Bourbaki's work, seems on the surface to be an abstract field of human study with no direct connection with the real world. In reality, however, it is ...