A passage suggested by the 2006 Oxford University Press title
The Architecture of Modern Mathematics , edited by
José Ferreirós and Jeremy Gray —
Jeremy Gray, Plato's Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics ,
Princeton, 2008 —
"Here, modernism is defined as an autonomous body of ideas,
having little or no outward reference, placing considerable emphasis
on formal aspects of the work and maintaining a complicated—
ndeed, anxious— rather than a naïve relationship with the day-to-day
world, which is the de facto view of a coherent group of people,
such as a professional or discipline-based group that has a high sense
of the seriousness and value of what it is trying to achieve.
This brisk definition…."
William Butler Yeats —
“Poets and Wits about him drew;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost.
‘What then?’
‘The work is done,’
grown old he thought,
‘According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage,
I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought’;
But louder sang that ghost,
‘What then?’“