Unknown Quantity – John Derbyshire ***

There is something rather fascinating about the little quotes you see on a the cover of a book. Sometimes they are intriguing, sometimes banal. In this case of this particular book, I had to wonder if someone writing for New Scientist, who commented “even algebraphobes will struggle to fault” was reading the same book. To be fair, “struggle to fault” is such a suspiciously ugly phrase that it’s hard not to suspect that there was more to that sentence in the original form than meets the eye. Whatever – as it stands it is very misleading.

To be fair, John Derbyshire does intertwine the mathematical bits of this history of algebra with a bit of context, telling us about the people involved, and those bits work rather well, but the fact remains there is no way you can describe this as a popular maths book. The suspicions are immediately raised by the way the book is divided up into numbered sections. There’s nothing like seeing §3.2 to bring all the joy of reading a textbook flooding back. What joy? Well, no, there isn’t any, is there? Before long, however much he Derbyshire dresses this up by telling us that Cardano (say) was “‘a piece of work’ as we might say now”, nine readers out of ten will be either struggling or bored rigid. This simply isn’t the way to get maths across to a popular audience. Maybe he should read a touch of Hawking to get the idea that you can be quite erudite without leaving your reader totally baffled.

In principle I hope I could have understood the maths – in practice, I didn’t want to. I have only ever given up three books part way through. One of these was a novel that everyone tells me is a classic and wonderful, but I found childish and boring (Catch 22), so maybe it’s me. On the other hand it could be the book.

If you are a mathematician and are interested in algebra, this is a great book to get some historical context, something sadly lacking from much university teaching. If you’re not – I really wouldn’t bother. For a much more approachable history of algebra (with group theory and symmetry thrown in) see The Equation that Couldn’t be Solved.

Paperback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

The Antigravity Enigma - Andrew May ****

Antigravity - the ability to overcome the pull of gravity - has been a fantasy for thousands of years and subject to more scientific (if impractical) fictional representation since H. G. Wells came up with cavorite in The First Men in the Moon . But is it plausible scientifically? Andrew May does a good job of pulling together three ways of looking at our love affair with antigravity (and the related concept of cancelling inertia) - in science fiction, in physics and in pseudoscience and crankery. As May points out, science fiction is an important starting point as the concept was deployed there well before we had a good enough understanding of gravity to make any sensible scientific stabs at the idea (even though, for instance, Michael Faraday did unsuccessfully experiment with a possible interaction between gravity and electromagnetism). We then get onto the science itself, noting the potential impact on any ideas of antigravity that come from the move from a Newtonian view of a...

The World as We Know It - Peter Dear ***

History professor Peter Dear gives us a detailed and reasoned coverage of the development of science as a concept from its origins as natural philosophy, covering the years from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. inclusive If that sounds a little dry, frankly, it is. But if you don't mind a very academic approach, it is certainly interesting. Obviously a major theme running through is the move from largely gentleman natural philosophers (with both implications of that word 'gentleman') to professional academic scientists. What started with clubs for relatively well off men with an interest, when universities did not stray far beyond what was included in mathematics (astronomy, for instance), would become a very different beast. The main scientific subjects that Dear covers are physics and biology - we get, for instance, a lot on the gradual move away from a purely mechanical views of physics - the reason Newton's 'action at a distance' gravity caused such ...

It's On You - Nick Chater and George Loewenstein *****

Going on the cover you might think this was a political polemic - and admittedly there's an element of that - but the reason it's so good is quite different. It shows how behavioural economics and social psychology have led us astray by putting the focus way too much on individuals. A particular target is the concept of nudges which (as described in Brainjacking ) have been hugely over-rated. But overall the key problem ties to another psychological concept: framing. Huge kudos to both Nick Chater and George Loewenstein - a behavioural scientist and an economics and psychology professor - for having the guts to take on the flaws in their own earlier work and that of colleagues, because they make clear just how limited and potentially dangerous is the belief that individuals changing their behaviour can solve large-scale problems. The main thesis of the book is that there are two ways to approach the major problems we face - an 'i-frame' where we focus on the individual ...

Search This Blog