Meaning in Mathematics – John Polkinghorne (Ed.) ***

In this book a number of leading mathematicians, philosophers and physicists, each contributing a chapter, offer us a range of reflections on the philosophy of mathematics, looking at, for example, the extent to which mathematics can be considered objective, and the issue of discovery versus creation in mathematics.

I really liked the format of the book. Each chapter is followed by a brief commentary by one of the other contributors to the book, with these commentaries providing alternative ways of looking at a particular issue, and encouraging the reader to engage in the debates. Further, the chapters are bite-sized and self-contained, and I enjoyed picking up the book to read, say, a chapter or two, before coming back to it later.

There is an occasional problem with the shortness of the chapters. This is that sometimes there isn’t enough room for ideas to be gently introduced to those of us who aren’t professional mathematicians or philosophers. Despite the book’s aim of being accessible to the layperson, at times it is just too much like an academic book to be considered good popular science.

Some contributions are not as dense as others, however. Marcus du Sautoy, who has perhaps had more practice than some of the other contributors in writing popular science, has written a very easy to follow chapter. And I particularly liked his idea of reconciling creation in mathematics with discovery – whilst all mathematical ideas already exist ‘out there’, in a Platonic sense, waiting to be discovered, mathematicians are still engaged in creative processes, in the sense that they have to choose, often for aesthetic reasons, the most appealing and useful ideas from among the much more banal.

Altogether, then, this is an interesting and thought-provoking collection, which does however suffer from being a little too difficult in parts.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Matt Chorley

Comments

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein, but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...

Search This Blog