The Search for Truth
By addebook • Oct 7th, 2008 • Category: Mathematics •
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The Search for Truth
by E. T. Bell
Title: The Search for Truth
Author: Eric Temple Bell
Publisher: The Williams & Wilkins Company
Date: 1934
Pages: x 291
From Constance Reid’s The Search for E. T. Bell:
… Bell was enthralled with the idea of “truth” as something in-
determinate. When Robert Gill of the Williams & Wilkins Company
asked him for another book on science, he offered one tentatively ti-
tled Pilate Silenced. The thrust of the book was to trace ideas about
mathematical and scientific truth and to argue that there is no “abso-
lute” truth. For his epigraph he took John 18:38-”Pilate saith unto
him, ‘What is truth?’”
It appears from this book (which was published as The Search for
Truth) that the exuberance Bell had earlier funneled into his scientific
adventure stories was now being funneled into a type of popular sci-
ence book quite different from The Queen of the Sciences. The Search for
Truth is a boisterous book. The author is even more present than is
usual in Bell’s popular writing. One has the sense that one is with him
in his little” shack” as he writes. He is constantly referring to his own
preferences and aversions, reminiscing about the old Barbary Coast,
describing drunken binges in San Francisco. At one point he gives the
date and time of his writing. At another he jumps up to check the
birthplace of Boole. There are constant interruptions by a character
called “Toby.” In fact, most disturbing stylistically is a chapter in which
he brings in his fictional “Toby” to challenge members of the academic
establishment (something that the real Toby was not at all averse to do-
ing). In the final chapter he descends to slapstick as he describes two
of his characters, the Dean and Mrs. Moody, falling into a bathtub in
the heat of their debate over who is to deliver the address on religion:
“As chairwoman, Toby ruled in favor of the Dean, chiefly because he is
a gentleman and Mrs. Moody obviously is not.”
In the case of the book, as in the case of Bell himself, opinion is
sharply divided. At the time a New York Times reviewer found it “a
brilliant book, and one so much out of the usual in its method and
attitude that it is a bit breathtaking.” But today, to a logician like Fefer-
man, it seems” so larded with all sorts of jokey asides and little stories
that you can’t believe he’s serious. There is very little real history. It
is quite jumpy and is always going off on tangents. Only in the last
few chapters does he try to get more serious and summarize his views.
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