Do you remember Évariste Galois, the 20 year old, who penned a famous letter to Chevalier outlining his mathematical ideas the night before dying from a duel? ☞https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Évariste_Galois …
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Mathematician Hermann Weyl said "This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind.”
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Replying to @monsoon0
OT Wondering whether the term mankind is Weyl's own or a sexist translation of Menschheit.
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Replying to @BarbaraFantechi
Do you mean he might have meant “humanity” or “humankind”?
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Replying to @monsoon0
The standard German word is Menschheit; Mensch means person, no gender. A good translation is humankind or humanity. Neo-Latin languages also have gender neutral words - that makes mankind particularly weird.
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Replying to @BarbaraFantechi @monsoon0
Is the question whether or not "mankind" is a common English term?
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Replying to @CreeepyJoe @monsoon0
No. The question is whether Weyl used a sexist term or his translator did. English has non sexist terms; there is no reason not to use them in translation.
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According to Wikiquote https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl …, the quote is from Weyl's 1952 book "Symmetry", based on lectures given at Princeton in 1951. I see the quote on page 77 of this PDF of the book https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/0512/91a3a0b351c3da83a96e40b48c7fb4778157.pdf …
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(page 138 in the internal numbering)
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Thank you! Sad to think that we can no longer ask Weyl for what word he would have used in German
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