- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Running Press (Dec 3 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0786712856
- ISBN-13: 978-0786712854
- Product Dimensions: 18 x 14.9 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 222 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #821,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
It amazes children, as they try to count themselves out of numbers, only to discover one day that the hundreds, thousands, and zillions go on forever—to something like infinity. And anyone who has advanced beyond the bounds of basic mathematics has soon marveled at that drunken number eight lying on its side in the pages of their work. Infinity fascinates; it takes the mind beyond its everyday concerns—indeed, beyond everything—to something always more. Infinity makes even the infinite universe seem small; yet it can also be infinitesimal. Infinity thrives on paradox, and it turns the simplest arithmetic on its head, with 1 seeming feasibly to equal 0, after all. Infinity defies common sense. The contemplation of it has relieved at least two great mathematicians of their sanity. Thoroughly readable and entirely accessible, science writer Brian Clegg's lively history explores infinity in its many intriguing facets, from its ancient origins to its place today at the heart of mathematics and science. He examines infinity's paradoxes and profiles the people who first grappled with and then defined and refined them, offering information, mystery, and poetry to conceive the inconceivable and define the indefinable.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good look at math history through one idea,
By
This review is from: Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable (Paperback)
I enjoy these types of books that track one idea through history. This book tracks the concept of infinity through history. It gives you a good look at the history as math as well as good insight into infinity. I thought Clegg did a good job making the concepts understandable for a "lay" person. If you are interested in math history, this book is a worthwhile read.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty good, but I wish he'd give more details,
By
This review is from: Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable (Paperback)
I liked the book. Clegg covers both the concept of infinity and its companion, the concept of infinitesimal, from Greek days to the present, in a way I found very readable. I have very little to complain about except that I found it sometimes frustrating that his treatment oversimplified and didn't give enough details.(For example, he has a chapter on Abraham Robinson's nonstandard analysis. I think that, next to Cantor, Robinson's ideas are probably the most important on the subject of anyone who has worked in it, yet I felt I did not get an adequate picture of Robinson's ideas of infinity and infinitesimals from the chapter.) Still, it is the best book on the subject at a "popular" level I have seen.
5.0 out of 5 stars
To Infinity and beyond!!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable (Paperback)
I love how Brian Clegg ingeniously expounds upon the concept of infinity challenging our minds to go beyond previously defined limits of the notion. Bizarre paradoxes, strange people and brilliant metaphors make the whole s move from the mundane to delightfully inspiring and I'm not really a fan of science.
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