36. A History of Numberwang
“I had spent the morning proving to myself that my chair existed so that I could sit down when it suddenly struck me: How, do we really know, whether it is, or it is not, Numberwang?
On my desk I saw a jug and in a flash of inspiration I knew I had solved it. Smashing the jug lest anyone copy my work, I went across to the rooms of my very good friend Wittgenstein. I opened the door and I said to him, quite simply: ‘that’s Numberwang’. As I remember, he cried.”
— Bertrand Russell, speaking in 1952