PREFACE
PREFACE
Not as explicit, verbalized knowledge—that would make continued work impossible. But as that nagging unease, carefully suppressed, that flares up at 3 AM or during a too-honest conference dinner after the third whiskey. The feeling that something is fundamentally wrong, that the edifice is built on nothing, that every proof is a formal dance atop an abyss.
And they teach it anyway.
A 2,400-year audit of Western thought, revealing that the universities did not inherit the legacy of Socrates—they betrayed it.
A priesthood of professional skeptics who dare not extend skepticism to their own axioms.
A research industry in which performative contradictions, infinite regress, and patched foundations are tolerated as long as the grant cycle continues.
A system where logic collapses, mathematics admits inconsistency but forbids talking about it, philosophy dissolves into rhetoric, and the custodians of knowledge become the defenders of a lucrative illusion.

They don’t teach set theory because it’s true. They teach it because:
• Departments need enrollment numbers
• Tenure requires publication in “rigorous” journals
• Grants demand technical sophistication
• Doctoral programs must produce more PhDs who will teach more students who will produce more PhDs
• The industry must perpetuate itself
The truth content is irrelevant. What matters is the appearance of rigor, the performance of knowledge, the ritual of proof.