“In the bookstores of Montparnasse, artists of all nationalities discussed the radically new perceptions of reality and self in the areas of science, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and art. Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead might have established, in a single system, all the valid principles of mathematical reasoning, a set of axioms upon which all rules would follow. But others, like Werner Heisenberg and Kurt Gödel, were pursuing their claim that the observer influences the observed and that any axiomatic system has undecidable propositions (for example, although we ought to be able to see ourselves in a mirror, we cannot see ourselves with closed eyes).”

I think this reads as an example for Gödel, but maybe it’s meant to be for Heisenberg. Either way its pretty crazy.

Accuracy aside, perhaps Beckett was thrown into his existential malaise because he was strong believer in Hilbert’s programme?