Ny!
Uncountable
A Philosophical History of Number and Humanity from Antiquity to the Present
"Ricardo and David Nirenberg, father and son scholars of mathematics and history, have teamed up in a breathtaking voyage examining the foundations and limits of knowledge in western thought. Not content with secondary sources, they have translated from the literature in their original languages: Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, and Spanish. In particular, they target mathematics and the natural sciences, and the way the concepts of sameness and differences affect our understanding of the natural world. But in the process, the authors touch upon many other facets of human endeavor, all named after their Greek roots: poetry, philosophy, psychology, economy. Along this wildly entertaining journey, we meet dozens of erudite thinkers, scientists, and writers such as Anaximander, Al-Farabi, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Reiner Maria Rilke. The book arrives just in time to give us ammunition as attempts are being made to put truth itself into the supercollider. It is a source of inspiration and comfort to learn how the far-flung ideas about numbers, our existence, and the world we live in have been debated in the past."--Joachim Frank, Columbia University, Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Our knowledge of mathematics has structured much of what we think we know about ourselves as individuals and communities, shaping our psychologies, sociologies, and economies. In pursuit of a more predictable and more controllable cosmos, we have extended mathematical insights and methods to more and more aspects of the world. Les mer
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Our knowledge of mathematics has structured much of what we think we know about ourselves as individuals and communities, shaping our psychologies, sociologies, and economies. In pursuit of a more predictable and more controllable cosmos, we have extended mathematical insights and methods to more and more aspects of the world. Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is applied to virtually every aspect of human activity. Yet, in the process, are we losing sight of the human? When we apply mathematics so broadly, what do we gain and what do we lose, and at what risk to humanity?
These are the questions that David and Ricardo L. Nirenberg ask in Uncountable, a provocative account of how numerical relations became the cornerstone of human claims to knowledge, truth, and certainty. There is a limit to these number-based claims, they argue, which they set out to explore. The Nirenbergs, father and son, bring together their backgrounds in math, history, literature, religion, and philosophy, interweaving scientific experiments with readings of poems, setting crises in mathematics alongside world wars, and putting medieval Muslim and Buddhist philosophers in conversation with Einstein, Schrödinger, and other giants of modern physics. The result is a powerful lesson in what counts as knowledge and its deepest implications for how we live our lives.
These are the questions that David and Ricardo L. Nirenberg ask in Uncountable, a provocative account of how numerical relations became the cornerstone of human claims to knowledge, truth, and certainty. There is a limit to these number-based claims, they argue, which they set out to explore. The Nirenbergs, father and son, bring together their backgrounds in math, history, literature, religion, and philosophy, interweaving scientific experiments with readings of poems, setting crises in mathematics alongside world wars, and putting medieval Muslim and Buddhist philosophers in conversation with Einstein, Schrödinger, and other giants of modern physics. The result is a powerful lesson in what counts as knowledge and its deepest implications for how we live our lives.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- University of Chicago Press
- Innbinding
- Innbundet
- Språk
- Engelsk
- ISBN
- 9780226646985
- Utgivelsesår
- 2021
- Format
- 23 x 15 cm
Anmeldelser
"Ricardo and David Nirenberg, father and son scholars of mathematics and history, have teamed up in a breathtaking voyage examining the foundations and limits of knowledge in western thought. Not content with secondary sources, they have translated from the literature in their original languages: Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, and Spanish. In particular, they target mathematics and the natural sciences, and the way the concepts of sameness and differences affect our understanding of the natural world. But in the process, the authors touch upon many other facets of human endeavor, all named after their Greek roots: poetry, philosophy, psychology, economy. Along this wildly entertaining journey, we meet dozens of erudite thinkers, scientists, and writers such as Anaximander, Al-Farabi, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werner Heisenberg, and Reiner Maria Rilke. The book arrives just in time to give us ammunition as attempts are being made to put truth itself into the supercollider. It is a source of inspiration and comfort to learn how the far-flung ideas about numbers, our existence, and the world we live in have been debated in the past."--Joachim Frank, Columbia University, Nobel Prize in Chemistry