After the Bomb

I was ten years old when my father, a Mathematics teacher at Pedro Nunes High School, opened Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919) and read me his definition of number: "The number of a class (set) is the class of all classes similar to it." And he explained to me: what do three books, a Beethoven trio, and the Holy Trinity have in common? The number 3!

From that moment on, Lord Russell – mathematician, philosopher, activist, and future Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1950 – became part of my life. In Oxford, I devoured the three volumes of his autobiography published successively in 1967-69. I learned the Liberal Decalogue that Lord Russell, "as a teacher, would like to promulgate." The 9th commandment always impressed me: "Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is even more inconvenient when you try to conceal it."

That's what I aimed to do throughout this After the Bomb. As for the 1st commandment, "Do not feel absolutely certain of anything," it defines scientific thought. As I put the final period on this book, I have only one certainty: if all science is an infinite epic poem, the Russellian definition of number is the most beautiful of all verses.

Work Details:

• Author: Jorge Calado
• Publisher: Gradiva
• Number of Pages: 312