George Duke wrote on Fri, Sep 26, 2008 04:43 PM UTC:
' Trofim Denisovich Lysenko: ''Any science is class-oriented by its nature.''
Joseph Stalin: ''HA-HA-HA! And what about Mathematics?'' ' --true exchange from year 1948
recorded by Rossianov in Isis 84 (1993). Obdurate Stalin did not realize
depth of his ha-ha-ha: any more perhaps than chess players realize depths
to come. Class and classification. The changing corpus of Chess partially
anticipated by fevered variant free-f(or)-all 2000-2009. ''Mathematics
is rich, even dense, with interconnections, but it exhibits no unity,''
stresses mathematician Ivor Grattan-Guinness. More and more activity comes under scrutiny
of science and math, but by themselves they fail to fulfill Leibnitz's
''pre-established harmony.'' Chess is different when ahead of its time
perceiving unity. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov: ''The development of Chess is
closely connected to the development of civilization. Everything that
happens is in one way or another connected to Chess. In the 1970's there
were two worlds fighting each other. Two political systems were in
conflict--which one is better? And then we have a situation on the
chessboard with the representative of the capitalist world, Fischer, on
one side, and Boris Spassky on the other side. These two worlds fought
each other. .... So, Chess was faster -- it foresaw this event. Chess is a mirror reflection of our life. Then, during perestroika--this unclear
situation mirrored our unclear situation in chess, the split of world
champions.'' --Ilyumzhinov from J.C. Hallman 'The Chess Artist'
(2003)