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Loading... Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinityby David Foster WallaceSeries: Great Discoveries (1)
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. This is the first book in Norton's Great Discoveries series. It's the weirdest science book I've ever read, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think it's not really successful in this case. I guess I prefer my popular math history to have more history, especially because the mathematicians involved had such interesting lives. (  ) wanack | Jun 28, 2008 |  A history of infinity, leading through Cantor to Weierstrass' robust definition of functional continuity. (Well I think so anyhow: only a third of the way there so far and this book doesn't feature big on inside sleeve summary or back cover testimonials, thank dog.) It is absolutely brilliant. This is isn't pop-science(math) is the usual sense where difficult science(math) is made accessible and interesting to the layman by watered-down analogy. This is a serious dude (English Professor?) turning abstract maths into hardcore language-fun (word plays, conceptual meta-jumps, self-referential statements) without the merest hint of watering anything down. He does it so fluently that one intermittently forgets how amazing it is that he can do this with material that is fucking hard to pin down at the best of times using precise mathematical notation. Featuring the word "shit" twice so far. Worth it just for opening chapter's discussion of "abstraction". jezzaboogie | Oct 17, 2007 | Weird pure-math "booklet" (of 319 pages!) with no index, no table of contents, no chapter divisions, no section headings, jaunty writing. Yet it's very meaty and absorbing. I wouldn't recommend the culminating account of Cantor's work as the clearest intro to that subject. fpagan | Dec 9, 2006 | I really don't need to read another book about infinity, but since this is by *David Foster Wallace* who is such a big-wig in the world of literature, I thought I'd give it a shot. The book is meant, as far as I can tell, to be an experiment, and IMHO the experiment fails. It attempts to be a chatty math book, and it attempts to play with language and typography (in a very mild way; lots of abbreviations, a rather aggressive breakdown into sections and footnotes). This sort of experimentation is obviously of interest to me in that I plan to be writing my own chatty physics book and playing with my own typography; obviously I certainly hope my version does not fall as flat with most readers as did this one with me. I do think I understand Wallace's biggest flaws. * Too much repetition of "This is all very complicated in the details" in various ways * Far far too much back-and-forth referencing, rather than an attempt to figure out how to lay out the book in such a way that a single monotonic increasing pass through it is satisfactory Oh, BTW, looking at the reviews of this and other DFW books on Amazon strongly suggests that this way this was written is the way DFW writes pretty much everything, which means I can cross him off the list of authors I'll bother reading in the future. (  ) name99 | Nov 14, 2006 | Conversational but technical introduction to the history of set theory and infinity. Some typically wonderful and amusing turns of phrase, but overall a bit messy, as if DFW's first draft was rushed to print. And he really does go overboard with footnotes this time. ( ) stancarey | Oct 6, 2006 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0297645676, Hardcover)Before discussing the merits of David Foster Wallace's Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, it is essential to define what the book is not. This volume in the "Great Discoveries" series is not a history of the personalities and social conditions that led to the "discovery" of infinity. Nor is it a narrative fixated on the cultish fear of--and obsession with--the infinite that has seemingly driven mathematicians insane over the centuries. Rather, Everything and More is a surprisingly rigorous march through the 2000 plus years of mathematical research that began with Aristotle; continued through Galileo, Isaac Newton, G.W. Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and J.W.R. Dedekind; and culminated in Georg Cantor and his Set Theory. The task Wallace (author of the bestseller Infinite Jest and other fiction) has set himself is enormously challenging: without radically compromising the complexity of the philosophy, metaphysics, or mathematics that underlies the evolving concept of infinity, present the material to a lay audience in a manner that is entertaining. To propel his narrative, Wallace even develops a style that mirrors the mathematical language he probes. One difficulty in his focus on concepts and not a strict human chronology, though, is that his structure is dependent on frequent digressions (especially early on). Patience is required. Wallace demands that his reader walk through the equations, study the graphs and charts, and relearn college-level concepts to follow along on the exploration. Indeed, after one wrenching dip into Zeno’s paradoxes, Wallace spouts at his imagined complaining audience: "Deal." But the book should be deemed a success. If one grants him the attention he requires, Wallace has made the trip richly rewarding. --Patrick O’Kelley(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:03 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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