Set Theory is Romantic Nonsense
``Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. The subject of Mathematical Logic splits fourfold into: recursive functions, the heart of the subject; proof theory, which includes the best theorem in the subject; sets and classes, whose romantic appeal far outweigh their mathematical substance; and model theory, whose value is its applicability to, and roots in, algebra.''

Gerald Sacks, The differential closure of a differential field; Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. Volume 78, Number 5 (1972), 629-634.

Absolutely, the correct take on Set Theory is that it is Romantic Nonsense, as Gerald Sacks says. [And I'm a Set Theorist!] But it's not just Romantic Nonsense, it's Romantic Nonsense of a highly specific time and place: Romantic Nonsense from that Wonderland that is the magic wellspring or perhaps the thistlegrove of Romantic Nonsense par excellence—the 1960s. Back then there was Bob Solovay's famous—epoch-defining—single: ``2ℵ0 can be anything it ought to be''—in the 1965 Skolem Memorial Volume indeed . . . . my copy of which arrived in the same parcel as my copy of Cohen's concept album Set Theory and the continuum Hypothesis for the (huge!) price of £9/10s which would have bought four full-price LPs (what are LPs??) . . . . in the summer of 1970. Anything it ought to be indeed. Love is all you need, after all. That and Haight-Ashbury, Woodstock, the Axiom of Determinacy, miniskirts, Measurable Cardinals contradict V=L, Set Theory in The Cavern, the Chatterly trial, Sex, Drugs, Rock'n'roll and Large Cardinals, the Independence of CH, forcing(!), the Moon Landings, Concorde, Carnaby street, Yellow Submarine, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Charles Manson, Talk-ins, Love-ins, Monty Pyth-ins* . . . . .

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
and to be young—was very heavan.

Not that i can remember any of it of course!

Forcing began
in 1963
. . . . between the end of the Chatterly ban
and the Beatles' first LP.

*``Do you like Dickens?'' ``I don't know, I've never been to one''
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