[The]
junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer
to his product.
He
does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
NEW: Do Mathematicians Have Responsibilities? to appear in Humanizing Mathematics and its Philosophy. Essays Celebrating the 90th Birthday of Reuben Hersh, B. Sriraman, editor: pdf (uncorrected version).
The following article, unlike the one above, is not primarily intended
for mathematicians, and should not be read as a history of p-adic Hodge theory
and perfectoid geometry, much less as a rigorous account of their mathematical
contents, which I am thoroughly unqualified to produce. I nevertheless apologize to colleagues
who feel their work has not been given its proper attribution. A more detailed clarification can be
found here.
NEW:
The Perfectoid Concept:
Test Case for an Absent Theory, in What
is a Mathematical Concept? E. de Freitas, N. Sinclair, A. Coles,
eds.: pdf
(uncorrected version).
Sudden
disorientation in a Paris museum, Notices of the AMS, 59, June-July 2012,
822-826.
Do
Androids Prove Theorems in Their Sleep? (slighly longer version of
article published in Circles Disturbed, A. Doxiadis and B. Mazur, eds.)
"Why Mathematics?" You May Ask (in The Princeton Companion to Mathematics,
T. Gowers et al, eds. pp. 966-977): pdf
Next-to-last draft, including many footnotes
deleted from the published version.
OLDER POLITICAL MATERIAL
NOW COMPLETE: Science for Nicaragua, archives 1986-1989
PRESENTATIONS
The Science of Tricks,
presentation at Mathematical
Cultures III, London, April 2014.
Avatars: mathematical conjectures in the light of (re)incarnation
Quicktime
movie of PowerPoint presentation at the conference "Two Streams in the
Philosophy of Mathematics: Rival Conceptions of Mathematical
Proof" University of
Hertfordshire, July 1-3, 2009 (long before the author had heard anything about Cameron's film!)
Small
version (for slow connections)
Photos
from an attempt to explain the American university system at Street
University (Уличный Университет), St. Petersburg, July 4, 2010. The soundtrack is unfortunately no
longer working.
BOOK REVIEWS
REVIEW OF Fashionable
Nonsense, A. Sokal and J. Bricmont (written early 1999)
REVIEW OF Mathematics and
the Roots of Postmodern Theory, V. Tasi'c (published in Notices of the AMS,
August 2003)
REVIEW OF Everything and
More, D. F. Wallace (published in Notices of the AMS, June-July 2004)
REVIEW
OF Genius at
Play, S. Roberts, Nature, 523, 406–407 (23 July 2015)
REVIEW
OF Birth of a
Theorem, C. Villani, American Mathematical Monthly, January 2016