A wide-ranging and comprehensive, if sometimes opaque, challenge to the traditional concept of the endless.
An extensively detailed philosophical case against the infinite.
As Sewell notes in his sprawling nonfiction debut, the concept of infinity is ancient and has powerful cultural weight. The notion of an infinite universe, for example, is deeply entrenched in human metaphysics. And yet, Sewell flatly announces that this idea is mistaken, “a logically inconsistent concept that has caused a great deal of confusion for the past 2.5 millennia.” Infinity, which Sewell defines as the state of being “limitless—in quantity, quality, or both,” he considers contradictory in nature and logically inconsistent, and he applies his objections to both the literal and the figurative sense of the infinity concept. Sewell sets out to prove that everything not “void of properties”—that is, everything that exists—is finite. In a series of densely packed chapters with numerous headings, subheadings, graphs, charts, and illustrations, he delves deeply into the realms of mathematics and philosophy to demonstrate that the description of “infinite” is ultimately nonsensical. Given the seriousness of his inquiry and the technical nature of much of his subject matter (“Collections that have a limit, in the sense of a specifiability condition for a range, are those that can be completely enumerated,” reads one of the gentler lines), large sections of the book may be an uphill climb for many readers. Sewell acknowledges this early on, adding a disclaimer that his book is intended for those who already have a fair knowledge of key elements of mathematics and philosophy. In this, however, he underestimates his own skills, as he’s extremely effective at breaking down all but the most abstruse concepts he discusses in these pages. Still, some ideas will still be hard for non-specialists to grasp.
A wide-ranging and comprehensive, if sometimes opaque, challenge to the traditional concept of the endless.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798988123804
Page Count: 824
Publisher: Rond Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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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
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