Customer Reviews

The Mind-Body Problem

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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"]!"

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.

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.

I just finished reading this book & enjoyed it very much. It is smart, funny, thought-provoking & well written. You may identify with the subject matter if you are NY Jewish &/or familiar with with university society, but neither are necessary to enjoy this book. It is necessary to like to be made to think. I especially liked her concept of the "mattering map" and its implications for the subjective vs objective nature of social reality.

I read this years ago when I was a math student dreaming of maths fame. Now I'm a philosophy graduate student. I am, however, neither beautiful nor a woman. This tale is enchanting, tragic, well told and wistful. I loved it and think it should be compulsory reading for all philosophy students (along with others in this tiny genre: especially Duffy's 'The World As I Found It' on Wittgenstein). Let your (Kantian) imaginations run riot and Dream On!

This is one of my favorite books of all time. Our heroine Renee struggles with the great philosophical questions of Cartesian Dualism and Metaphysics in a time where "the field had made a 'linguistic turn' and I . . . had not. The questions were now all of language. Instead of wrestling with large messy questions that have occupied previous centuries of ethicists, for example, one should examine the rules that govern words like 'good' and 'ought'. My very first seminar [. . .] was on adverbs. The metaphysics of adverbs? From Reality to . . . adverbs?"

While not struggling with the drabness of Linguistics Renee flounders with her own identity. Is she bright for a pretty girl? or merely nice-looking for such a clever girl? would either quality stand alone?

To further complicate her identity questions she marries a bumbling mathematical genius (think Paul Erdos): "I'm often asked what it's like to be married to a genius. The question used to please me -- as an affirmation of my place, of my counting for something (if only through marriage) in the only world that counted for anything. But even back then [. . .] I was uncertain how to answer. "wife of genius" does not in itself define a distinct personality. The description, and my own fluid nature left me the burden of choice. And I found it hard to choose. I could never even decide how I should arrange my face when I answered. Should I radiate the faintly dazed glow of one who stands within sweating distance of the raging fires of creativity? Or should my features exhibit the sharp practicality of managing the mundane affairs of an intellectual demigod? I could never decide, and usually ended up trying to look both dazed and practical, to look a logical contradiction, which is, I suppose, to look a fool. And that, of course, is the very, very last thing I have ever wanted to look."

I have reread this book three times in this decade. I don't loan my copy out to anyone. I highly recommend it to anyone, but particularly to pretty and intelligent philosophy students.

This book was recommended to me (for obvious reasons) and I enjoyed it very much. The main character seems so insecure, though, and I found myself feeling sorry for her. So many of the feelings and things she was going through mirror my own life! As I turned each page I began to think my own boyfriend may have been used as her model! Unlike Noam Himmell, however, the "real thing" is quite loving and attentive.

I largely enjoyed this novel. It is witty and strong-minded, although the prose style itself is perhaps unremarkable. Its main virtue is in questioning assumptions about who and what matters, and why. However, the story attempts to lay claims on our sympathies for its characters, whose tragedies include the narrator's dilemma of being beautiful but (self-confessedly) a bit thick -headed (despite getting into the best philosophy Ph.D program in the country), and her genius-mathematician-husband who *gasp* no longer feels himself to be a genius. I'm sorry, but my sympathies are not aroused by those 'dumb' philosophers at Princeton and their grumbling has-been genius husbands who didn't solve Fermat's Last Theorem. Still, it's worth a read.

This novel is about an intellectually insecure grad student who marries a famous genius mathematician, feeling her worth affirmed by his love and by the status conferred (explicit and subtle)upon her by being married to him. The marriage goes quickly sour as she realizes that an expansive mind is not incompatible with pettiness of spirit and human frailty. She sees only the genius and not the man. This novel is funny, and well-written but at the same time, it poses real questions and I think evidences a genuine human warmth. I think that it would not be an exxageration to say that I learned much from this book. You may as well (if nothing else, it's a good read)!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. To its credit it was not soley a woman's book...It broguht up many issues and was a wonderful story. One of my favorites.

The author seemed to me to go downhill from here.