A Brief History of Infinity – Brian Clegg *****

Clegg has an amiable, easy style; he chats us through complex ideas rather than lecturing to us. Like other good science populists (Isaac Asimov springs immediately to mind), he explores his subject through narrative and anecdote: hanging discussions of infinity onto their historical development puts flesh onto what might easily be dry bones in other writers' hands, and so we have a tour of fascinating personalities and slices of history, a subject breathed into life.Brian Clegg has just had me revisiting areas of mathematics I haven't even considered since university. And I enjoyed it.

We human beings have trouble with infinity. Philosophers and mathematicians have gone mad contemplating its nature and complexity – and yet it is a concept now routinely used by schoolchildren. In this highly entertaining and stimulating history, Brian Clegg takes us on a tour of that borderland between the extremely large and the ultimate, from Archimedes counting the grains of sand that would fill the universe, to the latest theories on the physical reality of the infinite.

Full of unexpected delights, the history of infinity proves to be a surprisingly human subject. Whether it’s St Augustine contemplating the nature of creation, Newton and Leibniz battling over the ownership of calculus or Cantor’s struggle to publicize his vision of the transfinite, infinity’s fascination remains the way it brings together the everyday and the extraordinary, prosaic daily life and the esoteric. Exploring the infinite is nothing more than a journey into paradox.
Although infinity is touched on in many places, as far as we are aware this is the only popular exploration of infinity around – and well worth getting hold of.

Paperback:

Kindle:

Audio download:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Peter Spitz & Keith Brooke (originally on Infinity Plus)

Please note, this title is written by the editor of the Popular Science website. Our review is still an honest opinion – and we could hardly omit the book – but do want to make the connection clear.

Comments

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The Autobiography – Charles Darwin ****

I have to confess to putting off reading this book until the last moment, as I expected it to be a typical piece of Victorian sentimental unreadable stodge. I was wrong. Darwin’s little book (only 150 small pages with appendices) was originally written for his own children, and displays a very personal style of writing – though, as son Francis comments, his style was always more populist than was common then: “In writing he sometimes showed the same strong tendency to strong expressions that he did in conversation. Thus in the Origin, p440, there is a description of a larvel [sic] cirripede ‘with six pairs of beautifully constructed natatory legs, a pair of magnificent compound eyes and extremely complex antennae’. We used to laugh at him for this sentence, which we compared to an advertisement.” The main book is delightful because it demonstrates Darwin’s self-depreciating modesty, and the fascinating path he took from enthusiastic shooter of game, to amateur geologist (still his...

The Premonitions Bureau - Sam Knight ****

Not everyone would class this as popular science, but it concerns an attempt to take a scientific approach to paranormal abilities - notably premonitions (aka clairvoyance) and as such, it fits the category. Writing in the typical dramatic storytelling style of a US magazine, Sam Knight brings to life the remarkable tale of the work of two British figures from the 1960s. The central one is psychiatrist John Barker, with a supporting role given to newspaper and TV science reporter Peter Fairley. Barker had a long interest in extra sensory phenomena - the story takes off when he was inspired by a number of people claiming to have foreseen the Aberfan disaster (which terrible tragedy Knight covers movingly). As a result of the Aberfan premonitions, the pair were responsible for London's Evening Standard newspaper setting up a long-running experiment in the form of 'The Premonitions Bureau.' Aware that the Aberfan predictions were only reported after the event, and hence flawe...

Search This Blog