For the budding mathematician in the house, to say nothing of lovers of puzzles and enigmas.
An abstract if oddly entertaining foray into the more philosophical realms of mathematics.
A noted popularizer of mathematics, Cheng, the author of Beyond Infinity and How To Bake Pi, works at the frontiers of the discipline in an arcane area “called category theory,” which “doesn’t involve numbers and equations at all.” If the thought of math without numbers makes your head hurt, the author’s latest book will be a constant challenge. Math is real, she tells us, in much the same way that Santa Claus is real: as an idea. Thus, as she puts it, it’s entirely possible that another idea can come into play, namely that 1 + 1 does not equal 2; the question then becomes not “What is 1” or “What is 2,” but instead, “What is a world in which 1 + 1 = 2?” Given that math, in concert with physics, admits the possibility of an infinite number of worlds, or dimensions, a world where 1 + 1 = 1 isn’t out of the question. Our world gives the answer of 2 because that’s the abstraction we agree on, just as we agree (for the most part) on the laws of logic—and that’s a key idea, for, as Cheng says brightly, “Mathematics is the logical study of how logical things work.” The strict rules of logic can, of course, make a person’s head hurt, too; one has only to think of Zeno’s paradox, wherein neither the tortoise nor the hare actually wins a race because “the sum doesn’t converge.” Some of the author’s examples take the form of equations, and while it helps to be numerate, the numerophobic shouldn’t shy away from digging in. Despite her provocative title, others are fun examples from the very real world, such as using a recipe for mayonnaise to discuss the process of commutativity.
For the budding mathematician in the house, to say nothing of lovers of puzzles and enigmas.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781541601826
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
