Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being
by John D. Barrow
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Whether one studies the farthest reaches of outer space or the inner space of elementary particles of matter, our understanding of the physical world is built upon that strange symbolic language we call mathematics. But what exactly is mathematics? And why does it work? Is it just an elaborate computer game? Or merely a human invention inspired by our practical needs? Or is it something larger than life? An immaterial 'pi in the sky' reality all of its own? Part of the mind of God? And how show more do the answers to these questions affect our quest to arrive at an understanding of the Universe? John D. Barrow explores these tantalizing questions in this book, a lively and illuminating study of the origins, the meaning, and the mystery of mathematics. He takes us from primitive counting to computability, from the counting rituals of the ancients to logics that govern universes other than our own, from Egyptian hieroglyphics to logical friction, from number mysticism to Marxist mathematics. We learn of the origins of counting the world over, the propensities of the human mind for the numerical when in pursuit of the ineffable, and how the dethronement of Euclid's geometry ushered in a new world of philosophical relativism in which traditional truths were dissolved. We meet a host of peculiar individuals who have thought some of the deepest and strangest thoughts that human minds have ever thought. And in a extraordinary final chapter, the Platonic picture of mathematics is developed in a startling new way that challenges us to consider how the mathematics of the future may turn out to be radically different from that of the present, and how it impinges upon our efforts to create an artificial intelligence. Full of the off-beat and the unexpected and quoting everyone from Lao-Tse to Robert Pirsig, to Charles Darwin and Stephen Leacock, Kurt Godel and Umberto Eco, Pi in the Sky is a profound - and profoundly different - exploration of the world of mathematics: where it comes from, what it is, and where it's going to take us if we follow it to the limit in our search for the ultimate meaning of the Universe. show lessTags
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Books referenced in Jim Holt's Why Does the World Exist?
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John D. Barrow is a scientist who writes accessibly about astrophysics and cosmology for both the general reader and the expert. Born in 1952, in London, England, Barrow earned a B.S. degree with first-class honors from the University of Durham in 1974. Three years later he received his doctorate from Magdalen College, Oxford. He was a junior show more research lecturer in astrophysics at Oxford University from 1977 to 1980 and became a lecturer in astronomy at the University of Sussex in Brighton in 1981. With coauthor Joseph Silk, Barrow published The Left Hand of Creation: The Origin and Evolution of the Expanding Universe in 1983. The book, which explains particle physics and its application to the creation and evolution of the universe, quickly won praise for its lucid style. Barrow delved further into this topic in 1994 with The Origin of the Universe. In this work he explored such questions as the possibility of extra dimensions to space, the beginning of time, and how human existence is part and parcel of the origin and composition of the universe. Barrow's other books include Pi and the Sky; Theories of Everything; and The World Within the World. He has also contributed many articles to such professional journals as New Scientist, Scientific American, and Nature. (Bowker Author Biography) John D. Barrow is research professor of mathematical sciences at Cambridge University. His previous books include "Between Inner & Outer Space", "The Universe That Discovered Itself", & "The Origin of the Universe". He lives in England. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being
- Original publication date
- 1992
- Epigraph
- From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx - Dedication
- To David, who now sees why people read books, but not why they write them
- First words
- A mystery lurks beneath the magic carpet of science, something that scientists have not been telling, something too shocking to mention except in rather esoterically refined circles: that at the root of the success of twentie... (show all)th century science there lies a deeply 'religious' belief—a belief in an unseen and perfect transcendental world that controls us in an unexplained way.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)We are the children as well as the mothers of invention.
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