It's pure Dutch
I am reading a book right now entitled Gnomes in the Fog: The Reception of Brouwer's Intuitionism in the 1920s. The author, Dennis E. Hesseling, is almost certainly the man of my dreams.[1] At any rate, he quotes the following from Brouwer:
``Theoretical logic does not teach anythign in the present world, and one knows this, at least sensible people do; it only serves lawyers and public leaders, not to instruct other people, but to decieve them. And this is possible because the mob unconsciously resons: that language with its logical figures exists, hence it will probably be useful, and in this way docilely lets itself be decieved; just as I heard several people defend their drinking gin with the words: `why else would gin exist?' '' (p. 39)
In the original Dutch, though ``gin'' is translated from ``jenever.'' :-)
A couple summers ago, I was in a bar in Amsterdam, and my cohort decided to order jenever, questionable liquor which the Dutch mysteriously enjoy. We asked the waiter, what variety of jenever should we try. ``None.'' Well, what is it even like? ``Oof... it's pure Dutch!''
[1] Interested parties, take notes: He is a bespectacled Dutchman, currently an economic consultant, formerly a math student, who, when introduced to the foundational crisis of the early 20th century, became so overcome with inrigue that he wrote a book about it---in LaTeX---and titled it after a Milan Kundera quote and a surreal Brouwer quote.
``Theoretical logic does not teach anythign in the present world, and one knows this, at least sensible people do; it only serves lawyers and public leaders, not to instruct other people, but to decieve them. And this is possible because the mob unconsciously resons: that language with its logical figures exists, hence it will probably be useful, and in this way docilely lets itself be decieved; just as I heard several people defend their drinking gin with the words: `why else would gin exist?' '' (p. 39)
In the original Dutch, though ``gin'' is translated from ``jenever.'' :-)
A couple summers ago, I was in a bar in Amsterdam, and my cohort decided to order jenever, questionable liquor which the Dutch mysteriously enjoy. We asked the waiter, what variety of jenever should we try. ``None.'' Well, what is it even like? ``Oof... it's pure Dutch!''
[1] Interested parties, take notes: He is a bespectacled Dutchman, currently an economic consultant, formerly a math student, who, when introduced to the foundational crisis of the early 20th century, became so overcome with inrigue that he wrote a book about it---in LaTeX---and titled it after a Milan Kundera quote and a surreal Brouwer quote.