These last
couple of weeks I’ve been reading several books I’d like to comment. Two of
them are in English. The other three are in Spanish and are about Argentine
history.
This is a cult
book. A strange book that claims to redefine the basis of Logic and Number
Theory. It was written in the ‘60s by a young and unknown author. It has a
group of enthusiastic followers that you can easily find with Google.
I found it to be
poorly written. The author mixes some serious math stuff with assorted
philosophical discussions, and with personal opinions of his own that I found
very easy to disagree with. For example, he says that on any axiomatic system,
the axioms are anything but self-evident. Well, the main idea of Euclid’s
axioms is self-evidence. Since the XX century we know this is not that
important, but it was crucial for Geometry for many centuries. Anyway, other
comments on the workings of science are really funny, and I do agree with them.
If you are brave
enough, and don’t mind your intelligence being challenged in many ways, you
might enjoy it.
I did not finish
reading it. At a point, it gets a bit boring, developing many formulas in the
author new Algebra. But I believe this book deserves serious study by a
mathematician (that I’m not). It’s a hard task, but I think the ideas in the
book deserve being extracted from such exotic prose, and either be rewritten in
a more standard style, or be refuted.
Yes, this is the
same Kurzweil of the music synth company. In this book, Kurzweil looks at the
advancements in computing power in the last hundred years, and concludes that
soon machines will be smarter than people. What kind of book is this? Is this a
technology book? A scientific book? A novel? The ideas are presented as
scientific facts. However, they are not presented in a rigorous style. And
there is hardly any reasoning to back up the many arbitrary predictions. So, I
don’t consider it a scientific or technology book. If we must consider it
fiction, a novel; then any real science fiction author will write a much better
story, without claiming it to be the unavoidable future.
I didn’t like
it.
Pigna is a
teacher of History at the University of Buenos Aires. This book covers the
early history of Argentina, since the “discovery” by Columbus, to the first
years of argentine independence, c.a. 1820. The book is well written, in an
entertaining style. Besides it is very well documented, with many references to
historic documents. The objective is for people to know how far from truth are
the History lessons we were taught at schools in Argentina.
For almost its
entire history, Argentina was governed by conservatives. Over the centuries,
the governments tried to hide some facts, inventing “mysteries”, for example
about the death of Mariano Moreno. Pigna unveils teaches us how things really
went, referencing historic documents. He also makes his own opinion and
ideology clear, but it is easy to separate them from documented facts.
I really enjoyed
it, and I recommend it to anyone wishing to know about the Spanish invasion of
America, and the early Argentine history.
Lanata is a well
known Argentine journalist. The objective of the book is similar to Pigna’s. It
covers the history of Buenos Aires and Argentina since the first Spanish
expeditions, up to 1910. It doesn’t cover in detail the conquest of the rest of
America. It is very well documented. It discloses some historic “mysteries”,
like the meeting between José de San Martín and Simón Bolívar.
This book puts
more emphasis on the financial dependence on other countries. The style is not
as entertaining as Pigna’s, but I recommend it to those willing to study
Argentine history in more detail.
Luna is a well
known writer about Argentine history. The book is a historic novel, an
imaginary autobiography of Julio Argentino Roca, who was twice the president of
Argentina 1880-1886 and 1898-1904. He was also the general of the army that
conquered the south half of Argentina from the Indians, killing an unknown
number of them in the process.
Being a novel
and not a history book allows Luna to put his own words in Roca’s mouth. This
means that we can’t know how close his sayings are to what Roca would actually
say. It also means that Luna doesn’t need to give historic references to back
up his writing. At the end of the book, Luna gives some references. Most of
them are newspapers of Roca’s times. This supports the idea of Luna saying only
the “official story”, the contrary of what Pigna and Lanata want to show.
I didn’t like
it. It makes me feel Luna is trying to convince me of his ideas, without
wanting me to realize of that.
These were the
books I’ve been reading the last days of 2006. Perhaps I should write some
comments on my lifelong favorite authors, like Jorge Luis Borges, Richard
Feynman, Dan Ingalls, and Gregory Chaitin.
Juan Vuletich