So much for the mathematicians. These hypotheses were regarded by some as an underestimation of human capability, as an obeisance toward something we didn’t yet comprehend, but which could be understood as a resurrection of the old doctrine of ignoramus et ignorabimus—“we do not know and will not know.” Others saw these as harmful, sterile fairy stories, and claimed the mathematicians’ hypotheses revealed a latterday mythology that saw an immense brain—whether electronic or plasmic—as the highest goal of being, the sum total of existence.
