A lecture on “Narrative and proof:  two ways, one story” by Apostolos Doxiadis, who graduated from Columbia College at the age of eighteen, and who, besides being a well-known mathematician is also a film director.
With the international bestseller “Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture” he helped launch the “mathematical fantasy” as a form of fiction.
The narrative approach to reality is as ancient as humankind. In contrast, the logical process of proof has a specific date and place of birth: two-and-a-half thousand years ago, in Athens, the city in which we live.
The traditional view holds that these two ways are entirely different, often diametrically opposed. But more recent views and debate, place both within a single model, where narrative is dominant. Using two approaches, literature and mathematics, the speaker will present the causes and form of this relationship.