Lancelot Hogben (1895–1975)

A masterful description of the field of Mathematics in the early 20th century. Hogben shows not just the how, but also the why, of mathematics, and sets it in the context of the historical questions it has aimed to answer. Sometimes his workings are slightly more difficult to follow than might be the case, and, irritatingly, he sets a number of exercises for the reader to complete, but does not give the answers to all the exercises at the back of the book!

This is too awesome not to own. I guess this is the text that set Sun Ra on his whole freaky language trip? Anyways it's not the kind of book I can't read cover to cover but even a partial reading gives you a much better and more holistic sense of how language works.

I haven't finished this book, so this review can't be considered complete, but the thing I noticed the most about the introduction is that the author subscribes to a naive and quite arrogant Whig history oriented towards a plebeian narrative about mathematics moving from a toy of the aristocracy to a tool for the common man. This wouldn't be too annoying in a normal mathematics textbook, except for the fact that this one claims to introduce the subject via the historical context of the show more subject.

Moreover, the philosophical perspective Hogben betrays here ranges from questionable ('Platonism in mathematics has been shattered because of Einstein' p 21) to mostly false ('zeno's Achilles and the Tortoise paradox has been resolved by modern numerical notation and calculus' pp 10-14). Moreover, his account of Plato in particular and the history of ideas in general seems so far little better than a self-serving caricature. This is what is whiggish in him, and it should bother anyone who (1) knows about history and who (2) thinks they are gaining a legitimate historical knowledge from reading this book.

Perhaps there will be more subtlety in chapters to come. I can only hope so. show less

This is a fascinating book. It is not an easy from-to back read, but for everyone who wants to think about the origin of language and the way that different languages interact, it is a key text. I would also add that if you want to learn another language, this gives great tips for doing so - and has greatly helped me.