The Seduction of Curves - Allan McRobie *****

Having recently been somewhat underwhelmed by a science/art crossover book, I was expecting to be equally unimpressed by The Seduction of Curves, which promises to cover 'the lines of beauty that connect mathematics, art and the nude' - but the result is, in truth, stunning (in a good way).

Using both examples from art and impressive original photography by Helena Weightman, Allan McRobie introduces us to the significant shapes that form the 'alphabet' of catastrophe theory. This sounds like something dealing with sudden and drastic failures of systems - and certainly it can be involved in them. But at its heart, it's about mathematical functions where a small change in a parameter makes a sudden and distinctive shift in the output - from example when a curve suddenly takes a totally different direction (as it often does on the contours of the human body).

What makes this very different from the other title I mentioned is that this is not just a coffee table book of pretty pictures with captions to explain them. It is a proper book, with text worth reading, illustrated by Weightman's subtle photographs (the cover is a good example of her approach) and by works of art. Just occasionally, the art perhaps dominates a little much (I'm thinking of the Moiré fringes section), but mostly the balance is such that it should appeal both to art lovers and those with a real interest in the mathematical basis.

It's such an original and impressive book, I hate to bring up a negative, but I think it would have benefited from having an introductory chapter giving us more basic background on catastrophe theory before plunging into the curves and the art/science crossover in the text. Without that, it felt that some of the mathematical side was presented without enough context.

The nudes are tasteful and are not the only photographic subjects by any means - there's an impressive section, for example, on catastrophe optics and another on gravitational lensing which, though not as visually effective as some of the rest of the book, gives a feel for a wider field of application of catastrophe theory.

The whole science/art crossover thing usually seems a feeble attempt to make science more approachable to arty types who would run a mile at the mention of a theory or a formula. (C. P. Snow's two cultures are alive and well.) When someone does an art installation based at CERN, say, it has the feel of a community project which seemed a good idea at the time, but does nothing to make the science more approachable. This is the first example I've ever seen of a book where it all comes together in a beautiful and cohesive whole.

Hardback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

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 ...

Introducing Artificial Intelligence – Henry Brighton & Howard Selina ****

It is almost impossible to rate these relentlessly hip books – they are pure marmite*. The huge Introducing … series (a vast range of books covering everything from Quantum Theory to Islam), previously known as … for Beginners , puts across the message in a style that owes as much to Terry Gilliam and pop art as it does to popular science. Pretty well every page features large graphics with speech bubbles that are supposed to emphasise the point. Funnily, Introducing Artificial Intelligence is both a good and bad example of the series. Let’s get the bad bits out of the way first. The illustrators of these books are very variable, and I didn’t particularly like the pictures here. They did add something – the illustrations in these books always have a lot of information content, rather than being window dressing – but they seemed more detached from the text and rather lacking in the oomph the best versions have. The other real problem is that...

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader. We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard. This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...

Search This Blog