11 ms·
Banned math book
- Mugwort 6y agoHilbert and Courant is BY FAR the best mathematical physics book in existence. No contest. Boas and all the others are good, even very good. H & C beats them by a kiloParsec.
- tikej 6y agoNew edition of Arfken, Weber and Harris is great!
- salamanderman 6y agoHildebrand "Methods of Applied Mathematics" is the most approachable math text I've read. After hearing me express confusion about various topics that my dad thought were straightforward, he gave me his book from when he was in college, and yes, things were suddenly straightforward.
- 082349872349872 6y agoDoes anyone know exactly where the ban was published? I haven't found it under either Courant or Hilbert in either https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/pageview/2540067 https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/pagevie... or https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/titleinfo/2539679 https://sammlungen.ulb.uni-muenster.de/hd/periodical/titlein... (Note the font change between 1935 and 1938, clearly showing I was in the wrong on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23446057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23446057 My bad!)
- tgb 6y agoI do dislike the phrase "banned book" because it doesn't indicate who banned it, which is all that matters. In this case, the Nazis over the author's political affiliation (to save you from the click bait title).
- DoofusOfDeath 6y agoIs there another phrasing you'd recommend?
- pantaloony 6y agoI don't have a gripe with the term per se but in this case omitting who did it plainly renders the headline clickbait. If one tiny bit of info added to a headline would lose you most of your clicks, you're being deceptive to gain clicks. In this case the info is that the Nazis banned the book, because no one at all familiar with their book-banning criteria would find it surprising that math books were among the ones they banned, and so would shrug and move on without clicking. The implication of the headline is that the banning is novel or surprising or perhaps especially (and most provocatively) due to its content, but it's not.
- kergonath 6y agoAny phrasing that includes some context: where, when, and by whom. How significant a ban is very much depends on this. I have no interest in reading an article about a book banned in Saudi Arabia, for example. Nazi Germany is not too far in the “countries in which a book being banned is utterly unsurprising” list.
- tgb 6y agoExactly. And a book shouldn't be listed as a "banned book" because one overly-cautious librarian decided they shouldn't have it in a school. You wouldn't call something "illegal" if it were illegal just in one country for a brief period of time. And 'banned' is used as a badge of honor - in this case it really has nothing to do with the book content either.
- zdw 6y agoWhat's the copyright status on this book? It's surprising to me that a new copy still costs $150 in 2020, when it was published in 1924, and both authors passed away 45+ years ago, and are thus unlikely to be "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
- ranko 6y agoHilbert died in 1943, so his copyright will have expired at the end of 2013 in many countries, including the UK and US Courant died in 1973, so his copyright will expire at the end of 2043.
- softwarejosh 6y agofucking disney
- fortran77 6y agoDisney doesn't pass laws. Congress does.
- vulcan01 6y agoDisney has done extensive lobbying to extend copyright terms. See the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
- csense 6y agoPassed by some of the finest Congressmen money can buy.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoThe law passed the Senate with unanimous consent, it doesn't seem like there are congressmen out of their budget.
- cf 6y agoI'm fairly sure Courant was persecuted for being Jewish. Other biographies are pretty clear on this and I can find no reference to what political party Courant belonged to in Germany.
- ranko 6y agoWikipedia has, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Courant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Courant: Courant left Germany in 1933, earlier than many Jewish escapees. He did not lose his position due to being Jewish, as his previous service as a front-line soldier exempted him; however, his public membership in the social-democratic left was reason enough (for the Nazis) for dismissal
- CrazyStat 6y agoThe citation there [1; pdf] has some additional information. I'm sure Courant was persecuted for being Jewish (see e.g. the discussion in that same document about how Landau was treated), but it seems to have not been the official reason for his dismissal. [1] http://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_files/1991b_Landau.pdf http://irma.math.unistra.fr/~schappa/NSch/Publications_files...
- 082349872349872 6y agoApparently one thing nazis and german communists could agree upon, both in theory and in practice, during the early thirties was that the social-democratic centrist/moderate alternative to either extreme had to be destroyed. (I left off reading Weil around this point. I'd get back to it, but find political systems without a healthy number of major parties rather depressing subjects.)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cf 6y agoThanks for finding that detail. I went to that article and missed it somehow.
- godelzilla 6y ago> According to his Wikipedia biography, Courant fled Germany ... because of his affiliation with the wrong political party. Courant was actually affiliated with a correct party. The nazis were the wrong party.
- kkylin 6y agoFor anyone who wants to know more about Courant’s life, the people he crossed paths with (which include some of the great mathematicians of the 20th C), and how NYU came to have the Courant Institute, Constance Reid’s biography is and nice read.
- JackFr 6y agoI like the detail that Hilbert asked what a Hilbert space was. Reminded me of hearing that Planck never called it Planck's constant, either using simply 'h' or 'the constant'.
- wadkar 6y agoI couldn’t understand the anecdote. What did hilbert think of the space? The author doesn’t say anything!
- heraclius 6y agoInitially I suspected that the most likely reason was that the _Deutsche Physik_ babble (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik) somehow had got out of hand, but evidently that wasn’t it.
- csense 6y agoI'm worried we've already gotten to this point in the US. Brendan Eich (the inventor of JavaScript!) was fired from Mozilla for having the wrong political views. The classic movie Gone With the Wind has been pulled from streaming services for political reasons. "But their views are wrong and distasteful!" you might say. And that might make sense to you. I'm sure the Nazis said the same thing about Courant and Hilbert's political views in the 1920's, and I'm sure it made sense to them.
- pfortuny 6y agoNot to speak about Soviet Russia’s censorship even of Eistein’s works at some time.
- crapitalism 6y agoBrendan Eich is free to pursue work elsewhere. Isn't this the free market at work?
- veonik 6y agoI agree that we are on a slippery slope here, but to equate BLM with Nazis is... well, I'm not sure, but that doesn't seem like a fair comparison to me. Gone With The Wind being pulled is about the non-suppression of black culture in the US. Yes, at the cost of suppressing southern white culture. But don't get me wrong-- I think promoting Black media is the best way forward, rather than suppressing anything at all. However, to compare this freely made decision on the part of streaming providers to meet societal/popular demand to a fascist regime hellbent on genocide...? Finally, you have always been liable to lose your job for having the wrong political views. Especially if you are vocal about them. Political perspective is not a protected class in the US, but maybe it should be? I could see some logic to something like that.
- shadowgovt 6y agoIt's protected in some states (California) but not federally. Whether it should be is... Complicated. The KKK is a political organization. I don't, personally, relish the idea of dueling lawsuits if political affiliation were protected and a company fired someone for Title VII violations for passing out pamphlets from their local KKK chapter about the supremacy of the white man.
- KKKKkkkk1 6y agoFrom the post: I wondered why the book was banned. Was Courant Jewish? I’d never considered this before, because I couldn’t care less about the ethnicity of authors. Jew or Greek, bond or free, male or female, I just care about their content. John, you start a post about Courant's Jewishness by denying that you have any interest in his Jewishness. This conveys the sense that being a Jew is dirty and should not be brought up in polite company. Don't do this.
- shard 6y agoI read it as him asking if Courant was part of a discriminated class at that time, not as him passing judgement on whether the class should be discriminated against.
- abstrakraft 6y agoIf you go through life looking to be offended, guess what? You're going to get offended.
- dang 6y ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- abraxas 6y agoWe got lucky that the nazis banned and expelled legitimate science and scientists on political grounds. This ensured that their science progress stagnated thus preventing them from acquiring nukes in time to change the course of the war.
- solarhoma 6y agoI’m not sure developing nuclear weapons by any nation was a good thing. We would be better off without nuclear weapons and the MAD associated.
- the_af 6y agoNot disagreeing with you, but I'm sure we can all agree nukes in the hands of Nazi Germany would have been an unmitigated disaster.
- hilbertseries 6y agoHard to say, nuclear weapons have also prevented WWIII so far.
- ezoe 6y agoI strongly doubt that. It's the global supply chain that prevent the another WW.
- hilbertseries 6y agoYou think the global supply chain is what prevented outright war between the US and Russia during the cold war?
- shadowgovt 6y agoIt's both. MAD gave breathing room for a global supply chain unhindered by another continent-consuming transnational conflict.
- diab0lic 6y ago
- leptoniscool 6y agoThis is eerily similar to today's world, where countries like India banning apps because it started in another country..
- Avicebron 6y agoI don't think banning tiktok because it works as spywware for the Chinese government is the same thing..
- mangamadaiyan 6y agoWell ... the banning is _partly_ in response to border violations by a neighbouring country. They're not dissimilar in spirit to sanctions, economic and otherwise, that a certain empowered country imposes on other less-empowered states.
- nahuel0x 6y agoIn Argentina a military governor from our last dictatorship banned teaching Set theory because it was a "collectivist idea" and was "against the individual". You can learn more here (spanish): https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=3404 https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=3404 Specifically, they banned the book "Conceptos básicos de matemática moderna" (Modern Maths Basic Concepts) / Hernández-Rojo-Rabuffetti
- grugagag 6y agoThat is absolutely ridiculous. Wow!
- 082349872349872 6y agoIt's a good thing no one ever told General Menendez[1] about how commonly arrows are reversed in category theory. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907276 Heraclitus having come up with πάντα ῥεῖ, he'd probably be the first one to carry a banner saying "Down with Heraclitus!" [1] No doubt the General would have disapproved of Bajofondo as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8SVYDvMVzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8SVYDvMVzY
- nahuel0x 6y agoWell, category theory is pure subversive stuff, just check the Lawvere-Hegel link or Grothendieck giving lectures at the Hanoi jungle to protest Vietnam War :)
- 082349872349872 6y agoIf even Joan Baez's cousin John doesn't get the Hegelian Taco, it may take me a little while to work up to it. Speaking of Hanoi, leg warmers were another item of pop culture found on both sides of the Iron Curtain. "Hanoi" Jane vs. Liliya Sabitova https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg_VnsmATFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg_VnsmATFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_SXPbDPMVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_SXPbDPMVE (bonus track: Hart, "Peace for Triple Piano" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcRW3FMuttY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcRW3FMuttY )
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- john4534243 6y agoThis is nothing compared to Hinduism's varna system(caste system), where the entire society is split in to 4 groups and learning to read and write is banned to the bottom 3 groups. Even the skills of one group is prohibited to be learned by the other.