“Bolzano’s story shows that European scientific and spiritual culture can also be advanced through quiet intellectual work in solitude, whose significance for modern logic, mathematics, and humanism might only be fully appreciated by a generation a century or two later.”
“Given his foreign-sounding surname, we tend to associate him less with Czech history than we do Dobrovský or Němcová. Perhaps that is for the best, though. The dust does not settle on his busts as heavily as it does on their monuments, allowing us to view him with fresh eyes from a historical distance.”
“Bolzano never quite fit in – he was and was not a Czech, German, Austrian, Italian... In an era of rising nationalism, he often met with resistance because of this, and the 20th century, full of national conflicts, was hardly favorable to the spread of his intellectual legacy. Today, the world at times resembles a global village, borders and differences between people are partially blurring, and perhaps an ideal opportunity is opening up to dust off Bolzano's works. It is no coincidence that behind this is a scientist who hails neither from the Czech lands, Austria, nor Italy, but all the way from Mexico.”
