Another pleasing popularization of science from an old hand.
Define the universe, and give two examples.
If that kind of challenge makes your head hurt, then science explainer and Cambridge mathematician Barrow’s latest excursus into the unusual (The Constants of Nature, 2003, etc.) will send pain receptors into overdrive. Infinity is a hard enough notion to grasp, the kind of thing that set many a smoky dorm room into far-out reveries back in the day. But what if there are multiple infinities? What if there are many different series of things that have no end, mathematically and logically? What if, as the Indian mathematician once said, below the seemingly endless chain of turtles that held the world up in the sky there were simply more turtles? That’s the kind of talk, Barrow writes, that once “made mathematicians very nervous about infinities. It is easy to see why infinity was regarded as a form of logical plague that destroyed the reliability of everything it touched.” Yes, it is, for infinity is a great underminer of certainty. Barrow has more questions for us to entertain: “Does the Universe have an ‘edge’ or is it simply unbounded in size?” “Is infinity just a shorthand for ‘finite but awfully big’?” Mathematicians, logicians, cosmologists, philosophers and physicists have been preoccupied by such conundrums for a very long time, and some of them, such as the 19th-century German scholar Georg Cantor, became “corrupters of youth” (as one of Cantor’s enemies charged) by showing that infinity was not just a potential but a process—and one, incidentally, that might lead to the doorway of God. (God’s infinity, Cantor said, was different from mathematical infinity and physical infinity. Let the headaches commence.) Mathematicians now take the idea of infinity/infinities for granted. Barrow is a lucid and sometimes even lyrical explainer, and nonspecialist readers with a liking for the history of science and the progress of human thought will find these pages to be most accessible. Prospective time-travelers, too, will want to brush up on the math toward the back of the book.
Another pleasing popularization of science from an old hand.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-42227-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2005
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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