[Undated]

Can we, at such a crisis as this, fall back on a racial myth on the offchance that it is a tool that has not yet outlived its usefulness? Let us interpret, for our purposes, the story of the Tower of Babel. I propose to use this story in a manner analogous to the use to which a scientist might put an already existing formula of mathematics. The mathematical construction may have been invented without any intention that it should be used as the scientist proposes to use it, or indeed without any intention that it should be used at all. Yet the scientist, despite the mathematician’s avowal that his formula has no meaning at all, may decide that he has found a realization that is the counterpart of the mathematical formulation and will use the formulation accordingly. This I shall now do with the story of the Tower of Babel.