Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The French Mind

I am often accused by one particular friend and collaborator of being intellectually French. This is due to a fascination with things called Lagrange multipliers and is deemed a major deficiency on my part.

Since said friend has recently discovered me time-wasting on here I thought I would post this great quote from Gore Vidal.

"The French mind," he adds, "is addicted to the postulating of elaborate systems in order to explain everything, while the Anglo-American mind tends to shy away from unified-field theories. We chart our courses point to point; they sight from the stars. The fact that neither really gets much of anywhere doesn't mean that we haven't all had some nice outings over the years."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

French? :) hm, I don't quite dare to contemplate what happens if you mix this with all the German names appearing in QM!

S