Comic Philosophy?

Graphic novel “Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth” is surprisingly fun, despite the book’s subject being analytical philosophy’s search for the foundations of mathematics. The Salon reviewer Laura Miller remarks: “What ‘Logicomix’ niftily demonstrates is how well the graphic novel form is suited to mounting sprightly explanations of abstract concepts. Thinkers often employ concrete metaphors as tools to convey difficult ideas — the ‘infinite hotel’ of mathematician David Hilbert, for example, an establishment that, although full, always has room for another guest. In ‘Logicomix,’ Hilbert’s paradox is further visualized by a character checking into an actual hotel and drawing arrows on the posted floor plan. That character is the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, and the scene is played for laughs with Russell’s bemused new bride shaking her head and a German porter exclaiming ‘They are crazy, these Britons!’”