Book Description
"Here is the story of algebra." With this deceptively simple introduction, we begin our journey. Flanked by formulae, shadowed by roots and radicals, but escorted by an expert who navigates unerringly on our behalf, we are guaranteed safe passage through even the most treacherous mathematical terrain.
Our first encounter with algebraic arithmetic takes us back thirty-eight centuries to the time of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Ur and Haran, Sodom and Gomorrah. Moving deftly from Abel's proof to the higher levels of abstraction developed by Galois, we are eventually introduced to what algebraists have been focusing on during the last century.
As we travel the ages, it becomes apparent that the invention of algebra was more than the start of a specific discipline of mathematics - it was also the birth of a new way of thinking that clarified both basic numeric concepts as well as our perception of the world around us. Algebraists broke new ground when they discarded the simple search for solutions to equations and concentrated instead on abstract groups. This dramatic shift in thinking revolutionized mathematics.
Written for those among us who are unencumbered by a fear of formulae, Unknown Quantity delivers on its promise to present a history of algebra. Astonishing in its bold presentation of the math and graced with narrative authority, our journey through the world of algebra is at once intellectually satisfying and pleasantly challenging.
Customer Reviews:
A very interesting, pleasant read.......2007-09-06
If you enjoy math or history or biography the book has all of these; good explanations, little details and interesting footnotes that I've not seen elsewhere. A very nice style that pulls one along to read another page. A book to keep and to give as a gift.
excellent.......2007-08-17
Of all pop math authors, Derbyshire is particularly good at explaining things. This book covers a lot of topics, yet the explanation of group theory is better than "The Equation Which Couldn't Be Solved". Admittedly, this is heavier reading than Fermat's Enigma, but much easier than some books by Maor and Nahin. Derbyshire has gotten this stuff down to an art form, and I look forward to future books.
Not for the Curious non mathematician.......2007-07-12
Despite the authors claim in the introduction, that this is for the curious non mathematician, this is not the case. I am a curious non mathematician, and I am struggling with this book considerably. I picked up this book because in a recent Biography of Einstein I learnt that in the topology of the universe he was working with something Riemann Surfaces, of which I have no concept and the Biography (being a Biography) did not elucidate. I was hoping that this book would educate me, but I doubt that I will even get that far.
While I cannot refute the history of Algebra that he documents, it is presented in a dry manner, disconnected from the real world. After reading half way through the book, I know about complex numbers and who invented them and the symbology for manipulating them, but have no Idea why I would care.
The book is undoubtedly a learned Tome, and it might be unfair of me to give it only a 3*. but I know no more about Algebra now than I did when I picked up the Book. Maybe I'll go back to the beginning and try again - Maybe not.
Excellent Book But Not For the Math-Phobic.......2007-06-24
Written in a style that is clear, authoritative, and often quite witty, this excellent book covers the history of algebra from ancient times to the present. Although algebra was originally created to fulfill practical needs, its evolution led it away from practicality and into abstractness until it came to dwell, as the author notes, "almost alone in a realm of perfect uselessness" (p. 315). However, the author points out that starting in the twentieth century modern science, especially physics, has discovered uses for mathematical objects that had been discovered in the nineteenth century. Throughout the book, mini-biographies of various important mathematicians who lived over the centuries are presented; these add a most-welcomed human touch to an otherwise rather cold topic. The author's obvious enthusiasm for his subject matter is quite contagious, making the book hard to put down. This tome would make an excellent complement to a course in modern algebra. As a result, I believe that those who would likely appreciate this book the most are mathematicians and serious math buffs. As a physicist, I had to read certain passages more than once for the concepts being presented to finally sink in. General readers with little or no mathematical knowledge would enjoy the writing style as it pertains to the biographical/historical snippets, but they may be hard pressed to get the full gist of many of the mathematical descriptions and arguments.
great book about math and not a math book.......2007-03-02
This is a fine book. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in history, science, or biography.
There are many portraits of fascinating people. You can see how the mathematicians fit into
the times and culture. There is a good description of the mathematics involved.
In mathematics books, as in most subjects, a critical choice is the choice of level, both the
assumed background of the reader and the speed of introducing new material. The same critical
choice applies to books about science. The level of the primers is the hard part. The readers
differ greatly in mathematical background, manipulative skill, and mathematical maturity. Do not
be put off by the difficulty of the primers. The heroes wrestled with the subject matter, too.
If it is hard for you, that might make it easier to appreciate how hard it was for them. It was.
I hope this book sparks a desire to learn more math, but this is not the book to learn it from.
Mathematics, even more than other sciences, is best learned by doing. Find a text book, with
exercises and answers. Learning about mathematics from this fine book is fine, but learning
mathematics from it is like learning to skate from "How to do a quad axel."
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Unknown Quantity
Paul Virilio
Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson
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The Accident of Art (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents)
ASIN: 0500976252 |
Book Description
Writer and urbanist Paul Virilio is considered to be one of the most important and incisive contemporary critics of technology and its moral, political, and cultural implications. His latest catalogue, published to accompany an exhibition he has conceived for the Fondation Cartier in Paris, examines the philosophical issues raised by our confrontation with accidents and their impact on our world.
Accidents capture our attention, surprise or shock us, disrupt or ultimately alter the course of our existence. Whether significant or insignificant, benign or disastrous, accidents always reveal something about ourselves and the systems we construct. For Virilio, to invent the ship is to invent the shipwreck, to invent electricity is to invent electrocution. Accidents are consequently, in his view, inherent in all technological systems. This catalogue features over 200 illustrations, including press photographs, paintings, and engravings representing natural and industrial accidents from the past three centuries. It also contains reproductions of the works of the many artists included in the exhibit, most notably Lebbeus Woods, Nancy Rubins, Stephen Vitiello, Cai Guo Qiang, Bruce Conner, Tony Oursler, Jonas Mekas, and Jem Cohen.
Paul Virilio has also invited visionary architect Lebbeus Woods and award-winning journalist Svetlana Aleksievitch to contribute texts to this catalogue. Distributed on behalf of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. 200 color illustrations.
Book Description
novel, Austria, tr Edwin & Willa Muir
Customer Reviews:
Science and Madness.......2001-11-29
In his protagonist, Richard Hieck, Broch has presented us with a companion to Robert Musil's Ulrich: both are men influenced by the unsettling theories of their time and both search for meaning within the maddening cacaphony of ideas, but where Ulrich is swallowed by the din Broch presents us with an intriguing resolution to the problems of disorder. Hieck is a mathematician, an astronomer, a scientist - he is a lonely man who pursues knowledge down all of its blind alleys and dead ends purely for the sake of the pursuit, certain that there is no end, no ultimate goal. All of his relationships with the world are kept at an uneasy distance; from his half-demented mentor Doctor Weitprecht, his saintly younger sister Susanne (whose own response to the chaos of her times is to become a true "Bride of Christ"), his bohemian artist brother Otto - all are as equally inscrutable to Richard as are the millions of stars which pattern the night sky. And throughout his quest he remains haunted by the memory of his father, himself a scientist who succombed to the madness of the universe; it would seem that Richard is doomed to an obscure life and unrepented death. Can he be saved?
I mention the comparison to Robert Musil's masterpiece, "The Man Without Qualities" not only because it bears a relation to Broch's work but also because the respective authors seemed to have know of their connection. No less an authority that Elias Canetti - who knew both men - explains the animosity between the two thusly: Musil believed Broch to be an amateurish writer and was suspicious that Broch could claim to have "solved" the ideas presented in his works so quickly ("The Unknown Quantity" was written in six months while Musil's own opus went unfinished after a lifetime of work). Broch believed Musil a "king of a paper empire" whose life's work mirrored the chaotic unfathomability of the time. This writer's spat aside, I think that it illustrates Broch's conclusion, perhaps his "solution" to the Unknown Quantity.
Broch suggests that the missing element in the equation of Richard Hieck's life is simply love: "an awkward kiss released from all willing, released from Being, upborne by a wave of darkness." p.132 When Hieck accepts that there are no answers to be discerned from the infinity of stars above, when he allows himself to recognize the beauty that is next to him in the person of the devoted Ilse Nydhalm, when he understands that he cannot make himself desireless - only then is Richard Hieck saved from the world of pure knowledge. "[I]n the lonliness of the heart everything is absolute, in the heart there are no statistically approximate values, there the law is valid, and that is all that there is to say." p.176 The Unknown Quantity is elusive for Richard, but it is also his salvation.
I recommend this novel as a fine introduction to Hermann Broch, who is at his most accesible in this, his fourth work (published in 1933). It presents many of the same themes which dominate Broch's works, from his "Sleepwalkers" trilogy down to "The Guiltless." A challenging writer and a satisfying read.
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Quantity planning and price planning in the Soviet Union
Hans Hirsch
Manufacturer: University of Pennsylvania Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: B0007DF1F4 |
Customer Reviews:
Mapping the necessary social function of art.......2001-07-15
Fischer's book, translated cleanly by Anna Bostock, addresses art from the levels of medium, message and magic. Thought-provoking and influential, _The Necessity of Art_ is also quite readable and not at all dogmatic. Book is divided into five sections:
The function of art
The origins of art
Art and capitalism
Content and form
The loss and discovery of reality
Perhaps the most-quoted passages come from "content and form", which was indeed for me the most interesting section of the book. Form as solidified social experience fits into his analysis extremely well and the idea is developed here in a fascinating manner.
Book Description
Mad hatter . . . pie in the sky . . . egg on your face. We use these phrases every day, yet how many of us know what they really mean or where they came from?
From bringing home the bacon to leaving no stone unturned, the English language is peppered with hundreds of common idioms borrowed from ancient traditions and civilizations throughout the world. In Red Herrings and White Elephants, Albert Jack has uncovered the amazing and sometimes downright bizarre stories behind many of our most familiar and eccentric modes of expression:
If you happen to be a bootlegger, your profession recalls the Wild West outlaws who sold illegal alcohol by concealing slender bottles of whiskey in their boots. If you're on cloud nine, you owe a nod to the American Weather Bureau's classification of clouds, the ninth topping out all others at a mountainous 40,000 feet. If you opt for the hair of the dog the morning after, you're following the advice of medieval English doctors, who recommended rubbing the hair of a dog into the wound left by the animal's bite.
A delightful compendium of anecdotes on everything from minding your p's and q's to pulling out all the stops, Red Herrings and White Elephants is an essential handbook for language-lovers of all ages.
Download Description
"
Mad hatter . . . pie in the sky . . . egg on your face. We use these phrases every day, yet how many of us know what they really mean or where they came from?
From bringing home the bacon to leaving no stone unturned, the English language is peppered with hundreds of common idioms borrowed from ancient traditions and civilizations throughout the world. In
Red Herrings and White Elephants,
Albert Jack has uncovered the amazing and sometimes downright bizarre stories behind many of our most familiar and eccentric modes of expression:
If you happen to be a bootlegger, your profession recalls the Wild West outlaws who sold illegal alcohol by concealing slender bottles of whiskey in their boots. If you're on cloud nine, you owe a nod to the American Weather Bureau's classification of clouds, the ninth topping out all others at a mountainous 40,000 feet. If you opt for the hair of the dog the morning after, you're following the advice of medieval English doctors, who recommended rubbing the hair of a dog into the wound left by the animal's bite.
A delightful compendium of anecdotes on everything from minding your p's and q's to pulling out all the stops,
Red Herrings and White Elephants is an essential handbook for language-lovers of all ages.
"
Customer Reviews:
Red Herrings and White Elephants.......2007-08-23
I love useless knowledge and this gives an ample supply and answers some of those impervious little questions.
Capturing English idiom in the wild: Red Herrings and White Elephants.......2006-07-01
This book explores the origin of common phrases used in every day speech.
Those reading the book should be aware that not all of the derivations presented are uncontested, and that a couple of the explanations seem truncated.
For example, I would recommend that anyone who is interested in the origin of 'biting the bullet' needs to be aware that the underlying rumour was that the grease was made out of cow or pig fat. The cow is sacred to the Hindu and the pig is an unclean animal to the Muslim. Therefore whether Hindu or Muslim, they felt that they were being forced into a polluting practice. While it is possible that some of the cartridges were made with pig or bullock fat, the contractors had been instructed to use mutton.
The book itself is an entertaining and easy to read addition to a reference library on English language.
Recommended.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
So that's where that saying comes from.......2006-03-04
I find these stories about expressions we use, like giving someone the whole nine yards, absolutely fascinating, and this book has hundreds of them, usefully organized. I even like paging through it for fifteen minutes before going to sleep, like having bite sized short stories. Great source for cocktail party conversation, and might make you seem very learned indeed.
read with a friend nearby.......2006-02-09
This is not the kind of book that you can just sit down and read. It is absolutely mandatory that you have someone nearby that you can tap on the shoulder and ask if they know what a red herring is or a white elephant. And then minutes later you will be bothering them with another gem that you just have to share. And then you interrupt them yet again with another one. Definitely a fun, interactive book.
Not one to rely on.......2005-03-24
This book should carry a label saying "Warning - don't assume that any of this is true". In the foreword the author portrays himself as being inspired to write it when sitting in an olde English pub musing on the oddness of English phrases. It reads as though it had been researched in a pub as well; many of the "origins" given are exactly the kind of thing you'd be told by some wiseacre leaning up against the bar. To disprove some of them, such as "keeping danger at bay" and "on the fiddle", wouldn't even take a reference library; you'd only need to look up the words in a good dictionary. One or two of them - such as "dead ringer" - come directly from a famous internet spoof, "Life in the 1500s".
The book is sloppy in every way. Regardless of whether the explanation of a phrase's origin is broadly correct or not, many of the supporting "facts" are wrong; such as the statements that a pig's ear "cannot be eaten or used in any way" - an assertion that would startle peasant cooks from all over Europe - and that pigs are "sacred to Hindus" (!)
It's very odd that some of the "explanations" of phrases in this book don't actually explain them at all. The images evoked by phrases like "flogging a dead horse" or "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" exactly match what we mean when we say them; the stories in "Red Herrings and White Elephants" actually make much less sense. And yet people seem to prefer the far-fetched stories. Strange.
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