——旧札新钞（111）

@  Eberhard Zeidler写了六卷《量子场论》，想在数学家与物理学家之间搭一座桥。他在序言里戏言，美国的Tacoma Narrows桥在1940年11月7日因为非线性共振效应垮塌了，他希望他的桥可别像那样（I hope that my bridge between mathematicians and physicists is not of Tacoma type.）。

@  历来就有人怀疑是否存在莎士比亚其人（正如有人怀疑屈原的存在）。美国黑人运动领袖Malcolm X也在自传里怀疑：假如真有那个语言大师的Shakespeare，为什么英王James召人翻译《圣经》时，没有找他呢？据说，卓别林也不大相信那个乡下人会写出那么伟大的作品。类似的历史假设问题很有趣也很无聊——照那个逻辑，莎翁以后的几百年里，竟然没有人能写出那样的作品，那么它们大概只能是外星人的杰作了（正如金字塔一样）？

@ 写爱丽斯的卡洛尔有本数学书Euclid and His Modern Rivals，他的意思是用欧几里得的《原本》取代现代的中学几何课本。Wiki百科的第一个Logo球面上的文字，就选自它的前言：In one respect this book is an experiment, and may chance to prove a failure: I mean that I have not thought it necessary to maintain throughout the gravity of style which scientific writers usually affect, and which has somehow come to be regarded as an ‘inseparable accident’ of scientific teaching. I never could quite see the reasonableness of this immemorial law: subjects there are, no doubt, which are in their essence too serious to admit of any lightness of treatment – but I cannot recognise Geometry as one of them. Nevertheless it will, I trust, be found that I have permitted myself a glimpse of the comic side of things only at fitting seasons, when the tired reader might well crave a moment’s breathing-space, and not on any occasion where it could endanger the continuity of the line of argument.