Overview
Circles Disturbed brings together important thinkers in mathematics, history, and philosophy to explore the relationship between mathematics and narrative. The book's title recalls the last words of the great Greek mathematician Archimedes before he was slain by a Roman soldier--""Don't disturb my circles""--words that seem to refer to two radically different concerns: that of the practical person living in the concrete world of reality, and that of the theoretician lost in a world of abstraction. Stories and theorems are, in a sense, the natural languages of these two worlds--stories representing the way we act and interact, and theorems giving us pure thought, distilled from the hustle and bustle of reality. Yet, though the voices of stories and theorems seem totally different, they share profound connections and similarities.A book unlike any other, Circles Disturbed delves into topics such as the way in which historical and biographical narratives shape our understanding of mathematics and mathematicians, the development of ""myths of origins"" in mathematics, the structure and importance of mathematical dreams, the role of storytelling in the formation of mathematical intuitions, the ways mathematics helps us organize the way we think about narrative structure, and much more. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Amir Alexander, David Corfield, Peter Galison, Timothy Gowers, Michael Harris, David Herman, Federica La Nave, G.E.R. Lloyd, Uri Margolin, Colin McLarty, Jan Christoph Meister, Arkady Plotnitsky, and Bernard Teissier.
Full Product Details
Author: Apostolos Doxiadis ,
Barry Mazur
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 5.30cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.964kg
ISBN: 9780691149042
ISBN 10: 0691149046
Pages: 552
Publication Date: 18 March 2012
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Tertiary & Higher Education
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Temporarily unavailable
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Language: English
Reviews
Editors Doxiadis and Mazur have compiled a collection of 15 essays that look at the many possible roles narrative can play in mathematics, which is usually considered far removed from storytelling... Circles Disturbed will be of special value to collections in history of mathematics, philosophy of mathematics, and mathematical pedagogy. Choice
Editors Doxiadis and Mazur have compiled a collection of 15 essays that look at the many possible roles narrative can play in mathematics, which is usually considered far removed from storytelling... Circles Disturbed will be of special value to collections in history of mathematics, philosophy of mathematics, and mathematical pedagogy. --Choice
Author Information
Apostolos Doxiadis is a writer whose books include Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture and Logicomix. Barry Mazur is the Gerhard Gade University Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Harvard University. His books include Imagining Numbers and Arithmetic Moduli of Elliptic Curves (Princeton).
