Can mysticism play a genuine role in the attainment of mathematical knowledge, especially knowledge of the infinite? Here the authors, confirmed secularists as they are, are less certain. “We trust rational thought more than mystical inspiration,” they say. The same, though, could be said of the French mathematicians who were supposedly surpassed by the Russians. One is left with the impression that mysticism in mathematics has at least a degree of pragmatic truth; that is, it works.
