(Here is video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHnrYCqlv9k )
Mathematics is a language that humans use to describe reality and the universe. But if the nature of reality is shocking in cosmic horror, the logical conclusion is that studying it can lead to madness. Here are some viable candidates for „scholars who looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into them.”
Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) – Austrian-American mathematician, physicist and philosopher. He dealt with, among others, theory of relativity (which in itself negates the image of the world that „common sense” dictates to us), deriving from it equations intended to prove the possibility of time travel. Towards the end of his life he went crazy, among other things. believing someone was trying to poison him. When his wife was hospitalized for a long time and was unable to taste his meals to prove the lack of poison, Gödel starved himself to death.
Georg Cantor (1845-1918) – German mathematician, creator of set theory. Over time, he delved deeper into mysticism and claimed that mathematics could be used to reach conclusions about metaphysics. Some Christian (Cantor himself considered himself a devout Christian) philosophers of his time claimed that Cantor’s mathematical theories were contrary to religious dogmas (it was something about proving the existence of an infinite being, other than God – I am not a mathematician, I don’t really understand what is going on). Cantor was tormented by bouts of depression, sometimes so severe that they led to hospitalization.
Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906) – Austrian physicist, pioneer of the kinetic theory of gases. He theorized the “Boltzmann brain” – a hypothetical self-aware entity that emerges from chaos through random fluctuations. Boltzmann proposed that we and our observed low-entropy world arose from a random fluctuation in a higher-entropy universe. He committed suicide by hanging. „If our current level of organization, having many self-aware entities, is the result of random fluctuation, and it is much less likely to be so than a level of organization that produces only self-aware self-aware entities, then in Post too long. Click here to view the full text.