Marta’s Appendix: My Life with Mario My goal in contributing to the memoirs that Mario is preparing for his 95th birthday is to supplement them by adding something new about him as a person. In order to do this I must necessarily refer to myself. Specifi cally, I will touch on the various aspects of our long life together in which Mario has had, and in some cases contin- ues to have, an important infl uence on me. I will not dwell on Mario Bunge as a philosopher, a physicist, or the author of work that is both vast and profound. Religion Like most middle-class Argentinians of my generation, I was educated (so to speak) in the midst of the Catholicism professed by my parents. I spent both my elementary and secondary school years as a day student at a religious school run by Carmelite Spanish nuns, situated in the Belgrano neighborhood of Buenos Aires where we lived. The religion taught at the school was just a collection of rites and stories from the bible, which in fact was limited to the New Testament. Once I showed the nuns an edition of the Old Testament that I had found in my father’s study at home. To my surprise, their reaction was one of anger – I was then ordered, without explanation, to take the book back home. At the end of high school I found myself inclined to pursue philosophy, motivated by a course taught in its last year that included Aristotelian logic. For this reason, and since I had been forbidden by my parents to attend the University of Buenos Aires (“a focus of dangerous ideas and a bastion of Peronism”), I enrolled as a phi- losophy student at the National Teacher’s College located near my home in Buenos Aires. The atmosphere in it was good, and the teachers, with some exceptions, were dedicated and accessible. I quickly formed part of a select group of seriously moti- vated girls with whom I studied beyond what was required by our professors. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 409 M. Bunge, Between Two Worlds, Springer Biographies, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-29251-9 410 Marta’s Appendix: My Life with Mario Particularly infl uential for me was the study of an excellent little book on sym- bolic logic by Father Bochenski. Four of us then attended, as auditing students, the course in the Philosophy of Science that the physicist and self-made philosopher Mario Bunge taught for the fi rst time at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Buenos Aires. This course, which he taught several other times thereafter, became the basis of Scientifi c Research , the best textbook on the philosophy of science that I have ever encountered. The course in question was both fascinating and hard, so much so that I had to ask Ricardo A. Cavallo, my father, a civil engineer with a solid knowledge of the basic sciences and mathematics, for help in writing up the weekly essays required for it. His help, coupled with my willingness to learn, led me to become the best student in a course of 50 or so students. It was not long before Mario took an interest in me, at fi rst just in order to encourage me in my future career, but then in a more serious way, leading eventually to his proposing marriage. His declaration of love seemed unreal since he hardly knew me outside of the classroom and of our walking together from the school to the train station, where we would take different trains. My interest in him was also deeper than that which a student normally has (or should have) for a much admired professor. However, among the various obstacles that I saw in accepting his proposal was that at the time I had become a practicing Catholic, infl uenced largely by my best friend Delia Garat, with whom I attended discussions led by Jesuit priests. This sort of Catholicism was different from that practiced in my home or in the nuns’ school – it was intellectually challenging and attracted me profoundly. However, Mario was handsome and intelligent, so it was natural that I too became romantically attracted to him. Compared to Mario, my friends from “the club” (Belgrano Club) seemed to come from another world – one of a life devoted to parties, sports, and gossip. I thus came little by little to the real- ization that the prospect of a life with Mario was worth fi ghting for, and that, if I decided to marry him, I would have to go against most of the rules established by the world I lived in. There was then still the matter of my religious beliefs. Yet, Mario’s arguments against religion in general and Catholicism in particular were fi nally convincing. He not only discussed these matters with me extensively, but also wrote me letters and poems, one of which I reproduce in the next section. By then, the threats of excom- munication that my father confessor had issued to me had become easy to dismiss. In fact, what that authoritarian priest achieved by it was to ensure that I never again stepped into a church or attended a mass except for either artistic or humanitarian reasons. To be totally sure of having made the right decision, I wrote for myself a long memoir on the reasons that I had for it. Eventually, my agnosticism became frank atheism and I have never changed my mind about it. This was the fi rst and perhaps the most profound infl uence that Mario has exerted on me during our long life together. Marta’s Appendix: My Life with Mario 411 An Unpublished Poem: ‘The Secret of Happiness’ by ‘Mario Bunge’ Let me show you the true secret of Happiness , Let me sell you the infallible Magic Recipe For baking the creamy sweet cake of Happy Life . If you promise to pay the price of the instruction , I ’ ll let you use the following Defi nition : Happiness equals Comfort Plus Unconcern Plus Peace of Mind , all well - balanced And well - shaken. The defi nitientia are easy to get , and cheap . All you need to buy Comfort is some money , And this you will earn In some way or other If you make the stern decision To turn it into the goal Of every one of your actions . Unconcern comes Next : it is the easiest to get . Just let things be ( Heidegger ’ s rule for getting free ) And you ’ ll feel far From other people ’ s sufferings , struggles , visions . Once you ’ ve got cozy Comfort And feel detached Enough , add the third ingredient . Your Peace of Mind Just requires systematic Persecution Of doubt , fi xation of belief , And suppression Of impractical inquiries . Now that you know How to become a happy human , Pay as agreed : Give me every one and all your Hopes and sorrows , Even the faint , untenable Hope that the dead hopes May live and enliven again , Even sorrows Deep and bitter like the sorrow Of a lost hope . Now that you ’ ve paid for the recipe Go , bake yourself The dreamt , the creamy , the sweet cake Of Happiness . (Mario Bunge, Buenos Aires, 30/11/1958) Between Philosophy and Mathematics During my four years of study at the National Teacher’s College specializing in Philosophy, I participated in small groups of study. With Alicia Wigdorovitz and other classmates we studied symbolic logic. With Delia Garat we studied the history of philosophy, taking advantage of the well-stocked library that she had in her house. Piled up on a large table that we shared there were books by Ernst Cassirer, 412 Marta’s Appendix: My Life with Mario the Greek classics, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and many others. I by far preferred the study of the history of philosophy (from the ancient Greeks to German philosophy and Marxism) to that of the only contemporary thinker that we were obliged to read – Martin Heidegger. None of our teachers was an original thinker. The fi rst authentic scientist and philosopher that I had encountered so far as a teacher was Mario Bunge, who was also endowed with a vast general culture. It was only then that I became aware that to devote myself to philosophy could be something quite different from and far more rewarding than studying various authors or existing philosophical systems. However, it was Mario himself who dissuaded me from so doing without fi rst getting a fi rst-hand acquaintance with some scientifi c discipline. This is precisely what he had done himself. The taste and facility that I seemed to have for logic led me to a career in math- ematics at the University of Buenos Aires, with Mario’s total support. Logic was taught by Gregorio Klimovsky. His courses and seminars were lively and fascinat- ing since in them we learned not just logic but also its connections with algebra. I recall as particularly important, among the texts that we studied under his supervi- sion, a work by Antonio Monteiro on fi lters and ideals, and the book by Roman Sikorski on Boolean algebras. Of course, in my mathematics studies I took many other courses which, due to my poor preparation from the religious school I attended for ten years, I found to be very diffi cult. Mario became, in fact, my fi rst calculus tutor, beginning with trigonometry, subjects which were for me the most diffi cult courses, whereas linear algebra and the so-called abstract algebra seemed to me to be almost trivial.