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9780801890185 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

What Is a Number?:

Mathematical Concepts and Their Origins
  • ISBN-13: 9780801890185
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Robert Tubbs
  • Price: AUD $68.99
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 16/03/2009
  • Format: Paperback 320 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: Mathematics [PB]
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Mathematics often seems incomprehensible, a melee of strange symbols thrown down on a page. But while formulae, theorems, and proofs can involve highly complex concepts, the math becomes transparent when viewed as part of a bigger picture. What Is a Number? provides that picture. Robert Tubbs examines how mathematical concepts like number, geometric truth, infinity, and proof have been employed by artists, theologians, philosophers, writers, and cosmologists from ancient times to the modern era. Looking at a broad range of topics—from Pythagoras's exploration of the connection between harmonious sounds and mathematical ratios to the understanding of time in both Western and pre-Columbian thought—Tubbs ties together seemingly disparate ideas to demonstrate the relationship between the sometimes elusive thought of artists and philosophers and the concrete logic of mathematicians. He complements his textual arguments with diagrams and illustrations. This historic and thematic study refutes the received wisdom that mathematical concepts are esoteric and divorced from other intellectual pursuits—revealing them instead as dynamic and intrinsic to almost every human endeavor.

Preface1. Mysticism, Number, and Geometry: An Introduction to Pythagoreanism2. The Elgin Marbles and Plato's Geometric Chemistry3. An Introduction to Infinity4. The Flat Earth and the Spherical Sky5. Theology, Logic, and Questions about Angels6. Time, Infinity, and Incommensurability7. Medieval Theories of Vision and the Discovery of Space8. The Shape of Space and the Fourth Dimension9. What Is a Number?10. The Dual Nature of Points and Lines11. Modern Mathematical Infinity12. Elegance and TruthNotesBibliographyIndex

""A beautiful narration... Every chapter is well balanced between the mathematical side and the art side.""

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