Nicolas Bourbaki(en.wikipedia.org)
en.wikipedia.org
Nicolas Bourbaki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki
49 comments
Its worth mentioning that the journal originally refused to publish the Sokal paper, and eventually put it in a special non-peer reviewed issue they were making called "Science Wars". The aim of the Science wars issue was to have as many different points of view represented as possible.
I find it amusing, given the context of the discussion, that people often fail to point this out.
I find it amusing, given the context of the discussion, that people often fail to point this out.
Thanks! I never knew that aspect of the Sokal story. Not surprised it's not repeated since it makes the story less entrancing.
Lame cop out. The article was a complete nonsense. It wasnt something like an unortodox view of things or passable article that missed some citations or whatnot. It would be like Nature publishing ramblings of some schizofrenic and when called out on it explaining that it wasnt peer reviewed
I would view it more in the lines of this
https://www.bmj.com/content/335/7633/1320
It is fairly common for "serious scientific journals" to publish stuff occasionally which is explicitly not part of their normal formal peer reviewed content, but nevertheless they think is likely to be interesting for their readers.
The Science Wars issue was different from the business as normal publications of the journal, and explicitly contained stuff that they wouldn't usually publish.
https://www.bmj.com/content/335/7633/1320
It is fairly common for "serious scientific journals" to publish stuff occasionally which is explicitly not part of their normal formal peer reviewed content, but nevertheless they think is likely to be interesting for their readers.
The Science Wars issue was different from the business as normal publications of the journal, and explicitly contained stuff that they wouldn't usually publish.
Yeah, right. Once caught with an egg on their face they just say "it's a prank bro!".
Ecyclopedia.com take on what the so called Science Wars was:
"The term science wars refers to a complex of discussions about the way the sciences are related to or incarnated in culture, history, and practice. These discussions came to be called a "war" in the mid 1990s because of a strong polarization over questions of legitimacy and authority."
Does it sound to you like some tongue-in-cheek discussions and joking around?
Does it sound to you like some tongue-in-cheek discussions and joking around?
The special issue certainly wasn't a matter of joking around, but it also wasn't a normal issue of the journal. After he submitted it they wrote to him (wikipedia quotes them): "We requested him (a) to excise a good deal of the philosophical speculation and (b) to excise most of his footnotes."
They stuck it in the special issue after he refused to make these changes.
They stuck it in the special issue after he refused to make these changes.
It doesn't matter what issue they put his nonsense in. What matters is that his article was designed on purpose to look 'intellectual' but was made up of total nonsense to prove his point that the editors will allow any junk to be published as long as it looks 'sophisticated'. And he indeed proved it. That's it. They would be better off just admitting that they made a mistake but noo, instead they pretend that nothing happened and it is all just a misunderstanding. And you completely unnecessary carry water for them.
I don't know about "schizophrenic", but Nature has published various weird things in their sub-journals.
I'd like to see an example on the same level as the Sokal article. That is a completely made up gibberish that is full of difficult words to look complicated and sophisticated.
In 2014, Springer and IEEE had to retract 120 comp-sci papers that were gibberish generated with SCIgen. The problem persists as of May 2021[1], and given the advancements in LLMs, I wouldn't be surprised if things are getting worse...
[1] https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.2449...
[1] https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.2449...
The Sokal article wasn't retracted and the editors still claim that they didn't make any mistake allowing his nonsense to be published. Can you see the difference?
Shrugs. It's an issue, but not necessarily as extreme as some people make it sound, and not entirely limited to the social sciences (see e.g. the justification of the physicist who approved Igor Bogdanov's thesis back in the day: All these were ideas that could possibly make sense. It showed some originality and some familiarity with the jargon. That's all I ask.).
I agree, in the grand scheme of things it's really nothing. It doesn't really bother me that someone somewhere published some nonsense. It only irks me the persistent defense of these obviously wrong decisions. Just admit you fucked up and move on. If the publishers did just that it would long have been forgotten.
"lack of intellectual rigour in contemporary post-modern cultural studies"
Is putting it rather kindly.
Is putting it rather kindly.
It’s formal in places and certainly rigorous, but I don’t find it difficult.
Only a bit related, but I recently learned that André Weil's sister Simone was a noted philosopher and fought in the Spanish Civil War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil
At a second-hand bookstore I bought a biography of Simone Weil and have overheard some conversations about her work, and it looks like her work is very popular. I said I was interested in the biography because of her brother Andre the famous number theorist, and they didn't know she had a brother. Different worlds combined :)
>her work is very popular
She was a great thinker and writer; I highly recommend her works.
She was a great thinker and writer; I highly recommend her works.
"The Weil Conjectures" by Karen Olsson is an interesting read that connects Andre and Simone and the authors own experiences as a math major. I thought it did a good job capture the appeal of math, but it's definitely not about the conjectures or their proof.
I would say that in France, Simone Weil really is more known than André Weil! And I suggest anyone to read La Condition Ouvrière (I don't know the title in English), which is not only very instructive and moving, but also specially beautiful in my opinion.
Not to be confused with Simone Veil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Veil (who also had an eventful life, to say the least).
For all that Bourbaki has been highly influential (and equally contentious) in maths, I don't actually know anyone who owns a copy of "Éléments". Is that just because I'm not French and it's actually huge among French mathematicians or perhaps because I'm just not "there" yet in my study of maths, having not got on to analysis in particular?
Obviously some ex-members of the group (Grothendieck and Serge Lang in particular) have published books that are more widely read.
Obviously some ex-members of the group (Grothendieck and Serge Lang in particular) have published books that are more widely read.
Given that you're talking about your "study of maths", I presume that you're a student. Well, Bourbaki books aren't textbooks. They're reference books. They're great when you need a theorem and you know you can just pickup your copy of "Lie algebras" and find it exactly where you expect it to be. And you know the proof will be there, and you know the proof of every single lemma used will be there. But it's not a learning tool. Think more about a dictionary/encyclopedia than a school book. You wouldn't learn to speak English by reading an English dictionary.
Sounds awesome. It's worth saying that the Serge Lang textbooks I have are awesome for learning maths from. I really love them - they don't treat me like an idiot and they have lots of problems to practise on - from basic to pretty hard, so I'm not negative about the group as a whole. I was genuinely curious.
> Well, Bourbaki books aren't textbooks. They're reference books.
The Bourbaki group has repeatedly emphasized that point and explained their goal and rationale with the Elements; and yet, people still blame them for all sorts of developments in post-graduate mathematics education. I find it rather unbecoming.
The Bourbaki group has repeatedly emphasized that point and explained their goal and rationale with the Elements; and yet, people still blame them for all sorts of developments in post-graduate mathematics education. I find it rather unbecoming.
Having met current and past members of the Bourbaki group, I can say with certainty that the group in general is very much opposed to the whole "new math" trend that (thankfully) fell out of grace. But I guess it's easier to find bogeyman for all of society's problems.
Could you elaborate more? What is the new trend? How it fell out of grace? Who were the members that voiced the view?
I guess there is a trend to consider, in which algebra and statistics tend to be picked and studied more in the last decade compared to e.g. analysis. Thus why we don't see all that many people studying advanced analysis books.
I would also argue that each country / culture teaches mathematics in a different way, which may not suit well with an outsider. From my experience US/UK tend to emphasize intuition first and rigor later, while French mainly focus on rigorous reasoning and proofs, leaving intuition as a by-product of experience that will be eventually picked up by the student on his own. That may discourage non-French students to further read such books.
I would also argue that each country / culture teaches mathematics in a different way, which may not suit well with an outsider. From my experience US/UK tend to emphasize intuition first and rigor later, while French mainly focus on rigorous reasoning and proofs, leaving intuition as a by-product of experience that will be eventually picked up by the student on his own. That may discourage non-French students to further read such books.
I actually own most of elements, in the original French and first edition! Found them on a used bookstore warehouse outside of DC for $5 each. They sell on eBay pretty regularly for >$100 (you have to search the French title). I don't speak French but it's cool to have them as a collectors item
We had our own for a while: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nickb
That user was extremely prolific and, at that time was believed to be a group of people blessed by pg.
That user was extremely prolific and, at that time was believed to be a group of people blessed by pg.
That brings back memories... I always wondered where they disappeared to.
They have an official twitter account apparently[1] which canonically is run by the daughter of Nicolas.
[1] https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fbet...
[1] https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fbet...
They've moved to ma(th)stodon after the twitter clusterfuck: https://mathstodon.xyz/@nbourbaki
> which canonically is run by the daughter of Nicolas
Is there a joke I'm missing?
Is there a joke I'm missing?
Nicholas Bourbaki is not a person. The Bourbaki group are a collective who work together (at a glacial pace) and publish under the pseudonym "Nicholas Bourbaki" when everyone in the group agrees that the work is done. They have lots of "in jokes" not least of which is the name Nicolas Bourbaki itself. Another of these in jokes that Nicolas has a daughter called Betty. They apparently published a wedding notice for her at some point also.
A group of Italian intellectuals recently used a similar approach, first going by "Luther Blissett" (who was an actual footballer) in the '90s, then "Wu Ming" (Chinese for "anonymous", initially suggested to be a legendary general like Sun Tzu), and later "Nicoletta Bourbaki". The three different collectives share some but not all participants, and focus on slightly different topics - or rather a different degree of focus, with Blissett being the most generic and Bourbaki the most specific (concerning herself only with fighting historic revisionism of WW2 in Italy).
I wholeheartedly recommend Luther Blissett's first novel, "Q"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(novel)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_(novel)
As a counterpoint, my favourite mathematician: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Arnold
How is this a "counterpoint"?
Arnold is very influential especially in "Russian math" pedagogy/philosophy, which could be contrasted a bit with "French math" where Bourbaki was very influential. I think anyone interested enough to read the Bourbaki article might be interested in reading about him since his wikipedia page has a few references pointing to interesting discussions about Bourbaki's influence. I should have mentioned a little details in the original comment, sorry!
Not to mention the kind of mathematician that the Fields medal is poorer for not having as an awardee
Also not to mention that he has written many great textbooks on top of his research work. I would recommend anyone in an intro or second mostly-methods-based DE course to read his Ordinary Differential Equations. He doesn't entirely avoid useful methods (as I recall) but the approach was extremely different to what I had seen before, but so natural (pointing at geometry and topology, immediately discussing vector fields and a nice notation for flows in the beginning chapter).
As I understand it, the Bourbaki school was basically obsessed with the idea of making maths rigorous to the point where their published work is extremely difficult to understand and you basically already have to know the subject to read the stuff. Other people, Arnold in particular, felt that it was important to learning to gain a more intuitive understanding even if that meant sacrificing some rigour along the way, and that once you got there you could go back and sort of fill in the blanks.
That's why that wiki page says
That's why that wiki page says
Arnold was an outspoken critic of the trend towards high levels of abstraction in mathematics during the middle of the last century. He had very strong opinions on how this approach—which was most popularly implemented by the Bourbaki school in France—initially had a negative impact on French mathematical education, and then later on that of other countries as well.
You mean Nico and the Niners?
All jesting aside, I still haven’t put together the reference to Nicolas Bourbaki in twentyone pilots’ “Nico and the Niners”. Just a clever history pun or something?
All jesting aside, I still haven’t put together the reference to Nicolas Bourbaki in twentyone pilots’ “Nico and the Niners”. Just a clever history pun or something?
The Bourbaki dangerous bend symbol is also a part of the lore and symbology for the band. I think that the use of the name is a 'clue' to the meaning of the symbol. The recent new release is the first time I think they've stated this explicitly.
Nicolas Bourbaki is the name of a character in twenty one pilots' concept album
"He'll always try to stop me, that Nicolas Bourbaki He's got no friends close, but those who know him most know He goes by Nico"
It is indeed inspired by the actual pseudonym, not just a pun.
"He'll always try to stop me, that Nicolas Bourbaki He's got no friends close, but those who know him most know He goes by Nico"
It is indeed inspired by the actual pseudonym, not just a pun.
Google twenty one pilots lore explained. There's few hours worth of videos on the topic :)
aka Satoshi Nakamoto V1.0
This gave rise to a cute inside joke in the Sokal hoax [0], where physicist Alan Sokal aimed to demonstrate the lack of intellectual rigour in contemporary post-modern cultural studies and produced a nonsensical "paper" (Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity) [1] that was promptly published in Social Text, an academic journal of cultural studies.
At any rate, in that article, there's a footnote (to the hilarious statement that "More recently, Lacan's topologie du sujet has been applied fruitfully to cinema criticism.") that reads:
> For a gentle introduction to set theory, see Bourbaki (1970).
Any competent peer reviewer reading the paper carefully would have fallen of the chair laughing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
[1] https://physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgre...