|
Whether one studies the farthest reaches
of outer space or the inner space of elementary particles
of matter, our understanding of the physical world is built
upon that strange symbolic language we call mathematics.
But what exactly is mathematics? And why does it work? Is
it just an elaborate computer game? Or merely a human invention
inspired by our practical needs? Or is it something larger
than life? An immaterial 'pi in the sky' reality all of
its own? Part of the mind of God? And how do the answers
to these questions affect our quest to arrive at an understanding
of the Universe?
John D. Barrow explores these tantalizing
questions in this book, a lively and illuminating study
of the origins, the meaning, and the mystery of mathematics.
He takes us from primitive counting to computability, from
the counting rituals of the ancients to logics that govern
universes other than our own, from Egyptian hieroglyphics
to logical friction, from number mysticism to Marxist mathematics.
We learn of the origins of counting the world over, the
propensities of the human mind for the numerical when in
pursuit of the ineffable, and how the dethronement of Euclid's
geometry ushered in a new world of philosophical relativism
in which traditional truths were dissolved. We meet a host
of peculiar individuals who have thought of some of the
deepest and strangest thoughts that human minds have ever
thought. And in an extraordinary final chapter, the Platonic
picture of mathematics is developed in a startling new way
that challenges us to consider how the mathematics of the
future may turn out to be radically different from that
of the present, and how it impinges upon our efforts to
create an artificial intelligence.
Full of the off-beat and the unexpected
and quoting everyone from Lao-Tse to Robert Pirsig, to Charles
Darwin and Stephen Leacock, Kurt Godel and Umberto Eco,
Pi in the Sky is a profound -- and profoundly different
-- exploration of the world of mathematics: where it comes
from, what it is, and where it's going to take us if we
follow it to the limit in our search for the ultimate meaning
of the Universe.
John D. Barrow is Professor of Astronomy
in the Astronomy Centre of the University of Sussex. He
is the author of several highly acclaimed books about the
nature and significance of modern developments in physics
and astronomy, including The Left Hand of Creation,
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, The World
within the World, and, most recently, Theories of
Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation.
|
