Log24

From Gilles Châtelet, Introduction to Figuring Space
(Springer, 1999) —

Metaphysics does have a catalytic effect, which has been described in a very beautiful text by the mathematician André Weil:

Nothing is more fertile, all mathematicians know, than these obscure analogies, these murky reflections of one theory in another, these furtive caresses, these inexplicable tiffs; also nothing gives as much pleasure to the researcher. A day comes when the illusion vanishes: presentiment turns into certainty … Luckily for researchers, as the fogs clear at one point, they form again at another.⁴

André Weil cuts to the quick here: he conjures these 'murky reflections', these 'furtive caresses', the 'theory of Galois that Lagrange touches … with his finger through a screen that he does not manage to pierce.' He is a connoisseur of these metaphysical 'fogs' whose dissipation at one point heralds their reforming at another. It would be better to talk here of a horizon that tilts thereby revealing a new space of gestures which has not as yet been elucidated and cut out as structure.

⁴ A. Weil, 'De la métaphysique aux mathématiques', (Oeuvres, vol. II, p. 408.)