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From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Philosophy, mathematics, and....life,
By
This review is from: The Mind-Body Problem (Paperback)
On a hot summer day over a ramen lunch I've been talking with a friend about Barry Mazur's latest monograph, "Imagining Numbers (2002)," a non-fiction book about mathematical imagination. The talk naturally evolved to as of why there is so little fictional work that writes about what it is like to be doing mathematics. My friend referred me to this book, adding that, though not written by a mathematician, it depicts behaviors of characters working in the field quite nicely."The Mind-Body Problem" is in fact written by a philosopher, and really is not about mathematics. It is about an intelligent young lady, Renee Feuer, who marries a world-renown mathematician, Noam Himmel, out of her insecurity: "...In short I was floundering [at Princeton as a grad student], and thus quite prepared to follow the venerably old feminine tradition of being saved by marriage. And, given the nature of my distress, no one could better play the part of my rescuing hero than the great Noam Himmel. For the man had an extravagance of what I was so agonizingly feeling the lack of: objective proof of one's own intellectual merit." Renee, born into an orthodox Jewish family in New Jersey, is self-acknowledging beautiful, and perhaps can be best characterized in her own words: "I had always thought of intelligence as power, the supreme power. Understanding is not the means of mastery, but the end itself (Spinoza)...I am only attracted to men who I believe to be more intelligent than I am. A detected mistake in logic considerably cools my desire. They can be shorter, they can be weaker, they can be poorer, they can be meaner, but they must be smarter. For the smart are the masters in my mattering region. And if you gain power over them, then through the transivity of power you too are powerful." Embedded throughout the novel were philosophical interpretations of mundane matters, reminiscent in style of Alain de Botton's bestseller "On Love (1995)." However Renee's descriptions didn't feel as slick or polished as the male protagonist of "On Love," and I wasn't so impressed uptil her honeymoon with Noam, which occupied roughly half of the book. Clever indeed, but her observations I felt too naked. I became engaged when Renee started to bare out the hardships -- the logical tyranny of Noam -- she had to face. There her "naked" remarks made her pain, and subsequently the sweetness of her affair with a physicist so palpable that I started wondering whether Renee's was really a story about the author herself. The finale was equally touching, but I choose not to reveal for your reading pleasure. I will simply add that it is about the difficulty of assessing others' hearts (the "Other's Mind" problem in philosophy). Back to the original question as of why there are so few fictional work by mathematicians. According to Noam, "A mathematician with his powers doesn't have any interest or time to write a book like this [Hardy's "A Mathematician's Apology"]!"
3.0 out of 5 stars
disappointing,
By patricia (United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Mind-Body Problem (Paperback)
Either I'm the only reader who found this book disappointing, or -- and more likely -- folks are less inclined to spend their time writing negative reviews. Once again, Rebecca Goldstein has taken an entrancing concept and fallen down on the execution. The book has some lovely bits, but my major question throughout was Where oh where was her editor??? Not a terrible read, but don't pay full price.
4.0 out of 5 stars
In Praise or Fear of Genius?,
This review is from: The Mind-Body Problem (Paperback)
Ms. Goldstein is a gifted writer and she is well-versed in several, dashing, scientific fields that are close to the theory of everything, including general relativity, quantum physics, and mathematical epistemology. Alas, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Gödel, three revered names whose thought cannot be used to form a complete sentence. They have left us, they have departed, and our predicament is that because of them, we neither know what time it is, nor in what place we are. Must genius be demonic? Or do we, the lesser souls, make it so for fear of losing our place in the minor world that we know. Ms. Goldstein entertains that subject, our praise and fear, and helps us in the familiar person of her heroine, Renee Feuer, and in the darkness of his genius, of Noam Himmel, the discoverer, at the age of twelve, of the "supernatural numbers." Feuer (or Erdman, if you like) and Himmel, like earth and sky. Some readers may find this book to be comical, but I don't have that sense of humor, and I hope that instead, this book may help us to regard the genius amongst us with more compassion, less fear, and greater utility. Moreover, the reader's investment is not for naught. Ms. Goldstein has books to follow, and her academic credentials suggest that there is some serious and concerted seeking going on that might help to lift us from our dilemma of time and space, or place, if nothing else.
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