The Renegade Jew

Here’s a lively dialogue on Baruch Spinoza. Money quote from Rebecca Goldstein, author of "Betraying Spinoza":

Showing the passionate side of the most abstract thought—mathematical logic, quantum mechanics, metaphysics— is sort of my beat, in fiction and non-fiction. I’m a novelist who certainly knows the tug of pure reason. Literary types, if they deal with the mathematical personality at all, often present it as being in terrified flight from the passions. What often is missed is that abstract thinking itself can be the most intoxicating passion of all. Of course, it can also be a terrified flight from the passions.