HUMAN VALUES AND SCIENCE, ART AND MATHEMATICS

by Lillian & Hugh G. Lieber ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

....delightfully transmits an important pedagogical message with great success. The authors, whose previous The Education of T.C. Mits and Wits and Logic are justly famous in the same vein, focus here on proving how ""postulational thinking"" can bring to human activity the moralizing influence of a truly scientific approach to reality. Combining uniquely (and graphically) their philosophies of art and science, they make crystal clear some of the complexities of logical thinking and reveal in a dramatic way many of the fundamentals of mathematics from the major paradox of Euclidean geometry to metamathematics. In showing that all mathematical thinking is based on man-made assumptions rather than ""eternal verities"", that some times 2 õ 2 do not equal four, or that the whole need not always be greater than any of its parts, they provide a simple, yet skillful introduction to mathematical concepts that could well stimulate interest in the queen of the sciences rather than stifle it. They offer their derivation of the moral position by means of an over-simplified (but perhaps necessarily so!) anagrammatic logic of concepts symbolized by the letters SAM, whose premises are drawn from the processes of Science (observation), Art (intuition) and Mathematics (deduction). In this integration they make clear that the truly scientific approach is unalterably opposed to a destructive (as against constructive) point of view, that it fosters freedom and a strong moral position. This ambitious effort to break through stereotypic thought patterns ought to be read seriously by young minds now in the ferment of being taught to think, and by those, who, teaching, have unconsciously permitted themselves to take positions of rationalized inflexibility. For every young adult, adult and science collection.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1961

Categories: NONFICTION