Elegant, learned, and far more accessible than much scientific discourse.
Much ado about, well, nothing.
Cambridge mathematician Barrow (Pi in the Sky, 1992, etc.) has established a reputation as a lucid explicator of difficult numerical and cosmological problems. Here he turns to some of the most difficult of all, at least insofar as lesser minds can grasp: nothingness. His narrative begins, simply enough, with the development of the idea of zero in several mathematical traditions, including the Mayan, Babylonian, and Indian. These independent inventions, which early generations of scholars took to be proof of cultural contacts in antiquity, developed naturally, Barrow maintains, out of positional or place-value numbering systems. “Once a positional system is introduced,” he writes, “it is only a matter of time before a zero symbol follows.” Zero is altogether too simple for the world because, as the author points out, it cannot encompass the relative degrees of nothingness that more recent physics have postulated; for that, we need “other null mathematical entities” that embrace the concept of a set that has no numbers within it, and here and hereafter Barrow’s lightly borne argument takes a somewhat more technical turn, leading into still more difficult concepts of quantum physics, many having to do with the origin and ultimate end of the universe. His depiction of that inevitable end, when everything slides gently into the vacuum that nature supposedly abhors and when new laws of physics override the ones we know, is intriguing—and quite beautiful. Still, readers with little background in mathematics will have their work cut out for them in following the author’s analysis—an effort that the author amply repays.
Elegant, learned, and far more accessible than much scientific discourse.Pub Date: April 12, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-42099-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
Hannah Arendt is one of the world's most profound political scientists: her scholarship is sterling, her philosophical- psychological insights staggering; two of her books Origins of Totalitariansim and Human Condition are among the few significant works in her field and our era. Whenever she publishes, it is an event. And although she is not at her best in this close study of the American and French revolutions and their meaning for the 20th century, still on every page we are in the presence of a mind of high individuality, great interest and intellectual integrity. It is her thesis that the Founding Fathers were faithful above all else to the ideal of freedom as the end and justification of revolution and thereby they assured its success. On the other hand, the Rousseau-Robespierre misalliance, the idea of the general will binding the many into the one, the transformation of the Rights of Man into the rights of Sans-Culotte, not only ultimately led to the Reign of Terror but also the whole catalogue of post-1792 ideological corruptions. The malhcurcux became the enrages, then the Industrial Revolution's miserables. And the Marxist Leninist acceptance of the new absolutism, which was done in the name of historical necessity and the name of the proletariat as a "natural" force, subsequently absolved both tyranny and blood baths as stages along the way... A powerful indictment and illumination, both immediate and enduring.
Pub Date: March 15, 1963
ISBN: 0143039903
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1963
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The Johnstown Flood was one of the greatest natural disasters of all time (actually manmade, since it was precipitated by a wealthy country club dam which had long been the source of justified misgivings). This then is a routine rundown of the catastrophe of May 31st, 1889, the biggest news story since Lincoln's murder in which thousands died. The most interesting incidental: a baby floated unharmed in its cradle for eighty miles.... Perhaps of local interest-but it lacks the Lord-ly touch.
Pub Date: March 18, 1968
ISBN: 0671207148
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1968
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