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Posted on April 16, 2007 at 11:19 pm

Why I both love and hate mathematics:

From Volume I of Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russel’s Principia Mathematica, page 379:

“From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1+1=2.”

This proof of this proposition is completed 373 pages later, on page 86 of Volume II, along with the note:

“The above proposition is occasionally useful.”

Thanks, Math. Love/hate you.

Also: Love Affairs and Differential Equations.

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