Piergiorgio Odifreddi
C'era una volta un paradosso-Storie di illusioni e verità rovesciate

THE REVIEW

"Once Upon a Paradox - Stories of Illusions and Reversed Truths", Piergiorgio Odifreddi (Ita) 2001. Published by Einaudi.

Odifreddi begins this “singular book” by quoting Shakespeare's Hamlet:

“This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof”, (Hamlet, III, I)

Even if, already in the following lines, there were no didactic aside, this quote would suffice to intuit the reason that led the professor from Cuneo to take the trouble to gather in a book, with his usual style, between mocking and engaged, human events, stories and short tales that, although in disparate sectors (from the world of senses to that of Mathematics and Logic, passing through various others) involve, quoting the incipit again, the “illusions and reversed truths” that go “beyond common opinion”.  

Indeed, uniting the words “time” and “paradox” in the same sentence casts the bait on how “ambiguities, puzzles, dilemmas, enigmas, mysteries…” often only need the passage of events to resolve themselves not only into simple curiosities but also, if one is “lucky” and has caught a big fish, into theorems and scientific truths.

Of course, the weapon is double-edged, and all of our author's bibliographic verve is needed to unravel sensory, (il)logical, philosophical, political tangles, etc. to not give a foothold to those who feed on mere metaphysics and, above all, to disprove, once again, various figures who see Odifreddi as blindly politicized in a sort of one-way “scientism” and then, perhaps, throw themselves into the arms of multicolored “pen-sellers” (let's hope we don't offend admirers of Pennac), “mythomaniacs” (more or less televisual) and “scribblers” with an easy gallows that crowd our media.

Because this is above all a book where stories (often enriched with curious anecdotes) are told both to “lift the veils of time” but also to entertain in a way that is not “slovenly” but elegant and philological.

The only flaw found is that there are at least 3 (out of 10) chapters quite difficult for those who are not versed in Mathematics and Physics, but they are compensated by others (such as the one dedicated to the antinomies of Democracy) that are truly “tasty”.