"Number is a metaphysic... The whole history of mathematics is subterranean, taking place beneath history itself, misunderstood, ignored, ridiculed, unread, a shadow-world scarcely perceived even by the learned. Of adventure, greatness, insanity and suicide, it is nevertheless a history of nothing happening. Of nothing happening. Magnitudes correspond in terms of proportion. Variables in terms of function. But nothing ever happens. Statements are proven to be neither provable nor disprovable. Nothing has happened, and yet, everything has changed. Existence would be sheer dread without the verifiable fictions of mathematics."
- Henrik Endor, a grub-eating mathematician-gone-mental, from Ratner's Star, an excellent pseudo-science-fiction novel by one of the English language's greatest living novelists, Don Delillo. Just read this, thought it was cool, and wanted to share. Ain't blogging grand?
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