May
14, 2017 Sunday
Bedtime
Story
On Jules Richard (1862 - 1956)
To
a certain extent, Gödel’s reasoning and the framework of argument is fashioned
upon the contention of a very well known logical antinomy that goes by the name
of Richard’s paradox.
Richard’s
paradox is a semantical antinomy of set theory and natural language.
I
hope you recall what an antinomy is.
Antinomy
in logic refers to real or apparent mutual incompatibility of two laws.
Antinomy,
paradox and contradiction are somewhat related and interchangeable terms and I
will not go too much into defining or differentiating them.
I
would rather go and talk about this very little known or rather unknown French
mathematician by the name of Jules Richard.
He
has rather a non-French name because when the first time I came across the
name, I expected him to be British.
Jules
Richard is one of those mathematicians who having been born in nineteenth
century strides across to the twentieth having born in 1862 and left in 1956.
(This
is how Paul Erdős – The man who loved numbers described death.
In
his idiosyncratic vocabulary, people who physically died had “left”.)
Richard’s
longevity of 94 years shows that he was fortunate enough to enjoy the benefits
of modern medicine, namely antibiotics, vaccinations against infectious
diseases and public hygiene, all of which came just about in 1940s.
Before
that, the average life span of the human ape was same as that of an average
chimpanzee in wild which is around 40 to 50 years (assuming he or she survived
the perils of birth, death in infancy and childbirth related complications).
Life
expectancy at birth (LEB) during the iron and bronze ages some 2500 years ago was
a dismal 26 years (so much for the glorious past that most human apes misconceive
of)!
Just
to clarify, the two terms ‘average life span’ and ‘life expectancy at birth’
are statistical two completely different measurements and concept.
I
will leave up to you to explore and discover the differences between those two.
Public
hygiene is something which many third world nations still find it a luxury to
impart to their society as the cost of providing it is humongous.
It
is another matter that the cost of NOT providing it to the citizens is even
more catastrophic.
The
great Bernhard Riemann was one of those not fortunate enough to get any form of
rational treatment for his tuberculosis (as there was none) and those
mycobacteria eventually devoured him at a tender age of forty.
Jules
Richard after finishing his doctorate from Faculté des sciences des Paris in 1901
took up teaching positions in several lycées all over the country including
Tours, Dijon and Châteauroux.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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