Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE GEOMETRY OF MEANING by Arthur M. Young

THE GEOMETRY OF MEANING

By

Pub Date: July 1st, 1976
Publisher: Delacorte

From Pythagoras through the cabalists and beyond there has always been a stream of thought that sees connections between ideas and numbers, be they the unitary whole, dualism with its polar opposites, the mystical trinity, and so on. In the Geometry of Meaning Young explores this territory, bringing to it a background in mathematics, physics, and engineering. His design of the Bell helicopter Model 47 was awarded the world's first helicopter license in 1946. The practical inventor now has turned to the invention of systems, grand schemes that elucidate relations between form and substance, experience and reason, learning and purposive action. Despite the all-encompassing abstractions, Young can be congratulated for expressing his ideas with simplicity and even felicity. Yet the sheer inventiveness of the system requires acceptance by faith rather than reason. His use of ideas from differential calculus and the physics of mass, length, and time will leave most readers gasping for air. Where there is overlap between readers who understand science and share a mystical bent, Young's ideas may find a proper home. For the rest there is probably much here that passeth all understanding.