In 1931, the logician Kurt Gödel published an astonishing proof that what Russell had wanted to do — construct a theory of logic from which every true mathematical statement could be derived — cannot possibly be done. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem has attracted an enormous amount of attention, and Logicomix makes much of it, but, in truth, Russell showed little interest in it. By the time it was published, he had, more or less, lost interest in both logic and mathematics and he never even bothered to read Gödel’s work.
Doxiadis, it seems, believes that Gödel effectively destroyed Russell’s hopes for logic and that therefore the story of his quest for certainty should be seen as a ‘tragedy’. His co-author, Papadimitriou, a computer scientist, believes that the story ends in triumph. His odd and unconvincing reason for this is that the ‘real hero’ of the story should be seen as the computer, which was developed by two mathematicians, Alan Turing and John von Neumann, trained in Russellian logic. Thanks to the computer, Papadimitriou claims, ‘the tools of reason are today at everybody’s fingertips’ and therefore Russell did succeed in making the world a more rational place, after all. This would make sense if that had been Russell’s aim in developing logic, but, as the first part of Logicomix makes clear, it wasn’t; what drove him was the desire to know something without any possible doubt.
The authors are a little too interested in their own disagreement on the question of whether the story they are telling is a happy one or not, and, at key points — including, most strikingly, the finale to the book — they insert themselves and their debate into the narrative. The book ends with an argument between the two authors about the value of computers, which seems only distantly related to the story they had initially set out to tell. Before we get to this disappointing conclusion, however, a surprising amount about Russell, logic, mathematics and philosophy has been conveyed in the most accessible and entertaining way possible.
Ray Monk’s two-volume life of Bertrand Russell is published by Vintage.
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