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Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472107640
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 185
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Book Description
'Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.' Douglas Adams, Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy We human beings have trouble with infinity - yet infinity is a surprisingly human subject. Philosophers and mathematicians have gone mad contemplating its nature and complexity - yet it is a concept routinely used by schoolchildren. Exploring the infinite is a journey into paradox. Here is a quantity that turns arithmetic on its head, making it feasible that 1 = 0. Here is a concept that enables us to cram as many extra guests as we like into an already full hotel. Most bizarrely of all, it is quite easy to show that there must be something bigger than infinity - when it surely should be the biggest thing that could possibly be. Brian Clegg takes us on a fascinating tour of that borderland between the extremely large and the ultimate that takes us from Archimedes, counting the grains of sand that would fill the universe, to the latest theories on the physical reality of the infinite. Full of unexpected delights, whether St Augustine contemplating the nature of creation, Newton and Leibniz battling over ownership of calculus, or Cantor struggling to publicise his vision of the transfinite, infinity's fascination is in the way it brings together the everyday and the extraordinary, prosaic daily life and the esoteric. Whether your interest in infinity is mathematical, philosophical, spiritual or just plain curious, this accessible book offers a stimulating and entertaining read.
Author: Brian Clegg
Publisher: Robinson
ISBN: 1472107640
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 185
Get Book Here
Book Description
'Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.' Douglas Adams, Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy We human beings have trouble with infinity - yet infinity is a surprisingly human subject. Philosophers and mathematicians have gone mad contemplating its nature and complexity - yet it is a concept routinely used by schoolchildren. Exploring the infinite is a journey into paradox. Here is a quantity that turns arithmetic on its head, making it feasible that 1 = 0. Here is a concept that enables us to cram as many extra guests as we like into an already full hotel. Most bizarrely of all, it is quite easy to show that there must be something bigger than infinity - when it surely should be the biggest thing that could possibly be. Brian Clegg takes us on a fascinating tour of that borderland between the extremely large and the ultimate that takes us from Archimedes, counting the grains of sand that would fill the universe, to the latest theories on the physical reality of the infinite. Full of unexpected delights, whether St Augustine contemplating the nature of creation, Newton and Leibniz battling over ownership of calculus, or Cantor struggling to publicise his vision of the transfinite, infinity's fascination is in the way it brings together the everyday and the extraordinary, prosaic daily life and the esoteric. Whether your interest in infinity is mathematical, philosophical, spiritual or just plain curious, this accessible book offers a stimulating and entertaining read.
Author: Paolo Zellini
Publisher: Penguin Global
ISBN:
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
In A Brief History of Infinity, the infinite in all its forms - viewed from the perspective of mathematicians, philosophers, and theologians - is explored, as Zellini strives to explain this fundamental principle. What is the difference between trueand false infinity? How might we explain away the puzzle of Zeno's paradox? And how is the concept of infinity helping us as we wrestle with the fundamental uncertainties of the quantum world? Paolo Zellini shows that the concept of the infinite is a multifaceted one, and eloquently demonstrates the manner in which humanity has attempted to comprehend that concept for millenia.
Author: Loren Graham
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674032934
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
The intellectual drama will attract readers who are interested in mystical religion and the foundations of mathematics. The personal drama will attract readers who are interested in a human tragedy with characters who met their fates with exceptional courage--Freeman Dyson.
Author: Rudy Rucker
Publisher: Bantam Books
ISBN: 5885010897
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 379
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Book Description
The book contains popular expositions (accessible to readers with no more than a high school mathematics background) on the mathematical theory of infinity, and a number of related topics. These include G?del's incompleteness theorems and their relationship to concepts of artificial intelligence and the human mind, as well as the conceivability of some unconventional cosmological models. The material is approached from a variety of viewpoints, some more conventionally mathematical and others being nearly mystical. There is a brief account of the author's personal contact with Kurt G?del.An appendix contains one of the few popular expositions on set theory research on what are known as "strong axioms of infinity."
Author: David Deutsch
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141969695
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 571
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Book Description
'Science has never had an advocate quite like David Deutsch ... A computational physicist on a par with his touchstones Alan Turing and Richard Feynman, and a philosopher in the line of his greatest hero, Karl Popper. His arguments are so clear that to read him is to experience the thrill of the highest level of discourse available on this planet and to understand it' Peter Forbes, Independent In our search for truth, how far have we advanced? This uniquely human quest for good explanations has driven amazing improvements in everything from scientific understanding and technology to politics, moral values and human welfare. But will progress end, either in catastrophe or completion - or will it continue infinitely? In this profound and seminal book, David Deutsch explores the furthest reaches of our current understanding, taking in the Infinity Hotel, supernovae and the nature of optimism, to instill in all of us a wonder at what we have achieved - and the fact that this is only the beginning of humanity's infinite possibility. 'This is Deutsch at his most ambitious, seeking to understand the implications of our scientific explanations of the world ... I enthusiastically recommend this rich, wide-ranging and elegantly written exposition of the unique insights of one of our most original intellectuals' Michael Berry, Times Higher Education Supplement 'Bold ... profound ... provocative and persuasive' Economist 'David Deutsch may well go down in history as one of the great scientists of our age' Scotsman
Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198755236
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
Ian Stewart considers the concept of infinity and the profound role it plays in mathematics, logic, physics, cosmology, and philosophy. He shows that working with infinity is not just an abstract, intellectual exercise, and analyses its important practical everyday applications.
Author: Paolo Mancosu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198746822
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
Mancosu offers an original investigation of key notions in mathematics: abstraction and infinity, and their interaction. He gives a historical analysis of the theorizing of definitions by abstraction, and explores a novel approach to measuring the size of infinite sets, showing how this leads to deep mathematical and philosophical problems.
Author: Marcus Chown
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1635765935
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
A mind-bending journey through some of the most weird and wonderful facts about our universe, vividly illuminating the hidden truths that govern our everyday lives. Fact: You could fit the whole human race in the volume of a sugar cube. Fact: The electrical energy in a single mosquito is enough to cause a global mass extinction. Fact: You age more quickly on the top floor than on the ground floor. So much of our world seems to make perfect sense, and scientific breakthroughs have helped us understand ourselves, our planet, and our place in the universe in fascinating detail. But our adventures in space, our deepening understanding of the quantum world, and our leaps in technology have also revealed a universe far stranger than we ever imagined. With brilliant clarity and wit, bestselling author Marcus Chown examines the profound science behind fifty remarkable scientific facts that help explain the vast complexities of our existence. “The tone is consistently light and breezy...An addictive, intriguing, and entertaining read...A handy guide for anyone yearning to spice up their conversational skills.”—Booklist “Heavy stuff lightly spun―just the thing for the science buff in the house.”―Kirkus Review
Author: Yaroslav D. Sergeyev
Publisher: Yaroslav D. Sergeyev
ISBN: 8889064013
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 112
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Book Description
The first chapter of the book gives a brief description of the modern viewpoint on real numbers and presents the famous results of Georg Cantor regarding infinity. The second chapter has a preparative character and links the first and the third parts of the book. On the one hand, it shows that the commonly accepted point of view on numbers and infinity is not so clear as it seems at first sight (for example, it leads to numerous paradoxes). On the other hand, the chapter contains preliminary observations that will be used in the constructive introduction of a new arithmetic of infinity, given in the third chapter. This last part of the book contains the main results. It introduces notions of infinite and infinitesimal numbers, extended natural and real numbers, and operations with them. Surprisingly, the introduced arithmetical operations result in being very simple and are obtained as immediate extensions of the usual addition, multiplication, and division of finite numbers to infinite ones. This simplicity is a consequence of a newly developed positional numeral system used to express infinite numbers. Finally, the chapter contains solutions to a number of paradoxes regarding infinity (we can say that the new approach allows us to avoid paradoxes) and some examples of applications. In order to broaden the audience, the book was written as a popular one. The interested reader can find a number of technical articles of several researches that use the approach introduced here for solving a variety of research problems at the web page of the author. The author Yaroslav D. Sergeyev is Distinguished Professor and Head of Numerical Calculus Laboratory at the University of Calabria, Italy. He is also Professor (part-time contract) at Lobachevsky Nizhni Novgorod State University, Russia. His research interests include numerical analysis, global optimization, infinity computing, set theory, number theory, fractals, and parallel computing. He has been awarded several national and international prizes (Pythagoras International Prize in Mathematics, Italy; Lagrange Lecture, Turin University, Italy; MAIK Prize for the best scientific monograph published in Russian, Moscow, etc.). His list of scientific publications contains more than 200 items. He is a member of editorial boards of 5 international journals and has given more than 50 plenary and keynote lectures at prestigious international congresses.
Author: Robert Kanigel
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476763496
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
A biography of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. The book gives a detailed account of his upbringing in India, his mathematical achievements, and his mathematical collaboration with English mathematician G. H. Hardy. The book also reviews the life of Hardy and the academic culture of Cambridge University during the early twentieth century.
