Blueprints
How mathematics shapes creativity
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- ¥2,000
発行者による作品情報
*A Financial Times and Waterstones Book of the Year 2025*
Many artists are unaware of the mathematics that bubble beneath their craft, while some consciously use it for inspiration. Our instincts might tell us that these two subjects are incompatible forces with nothing in common, but what if we’re wrong?
Marcus du Sautoy, acclaimed mathematician and Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, looks to art, music, design and literature to uncover the key mathematical structures that underpin both human creativity and the natural world.
Blueprints takes us from the earliest stone circles to the modernist architecture of Le Corbusier, from Bach’s circular compositions to Radiohead’s disruptive soundscapes, and from Shakespeare’s hidden numerical clues to the Dada artists who embraced randomness. Instead of polar opposites we find a complementary relationship that spans a vast historical and geographic landscape.
Whether we are searching for meaning in an abstract painting or deciphering poetry, there are blueprints everywhere: prime numbers, symmetry, fractals and the weirder worlds of Hamiltonian cycles and hyperbolic geometry. Nature similarly exploits these structures to achieve the wonders of our universe.
In this innovative and delightfully bold exploration of creativity, Marcus explains how we make art, why a creative mindset is vital for discovering new mathematics and how a fundamental connection to the natural world intrinsically links these two subjects.
‘Blueprints is an extraordinary book which shows us how mathematics and art are connected through structures. Du Sautoy shows us how to bridge the divide of science and the humanities and proves that we can only face and solve the big challenges of the twenty-first century if we go beyond the fear of pooling knowledge’ Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries
About the author
Marcus du Sautoy is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the Royal Society. In 2008 he was appointed to the university’s prestigious professorship as the Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science, a post previously held by Richard Dawkins. He has presented numerous radio and TV programmes, including a four-part landmark TV series for the BBC called The Story of Maths. He works extensively with a range of arts organisations bringing science alive for the public, from the Royal Opera House to the Glastonbury Festival and from Complicité theatre company to Serpentine Galleries.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oxford mathematics professor du Sautoy (Around the World in Eighty Games) offers an impressive if occasionally perplexing exploration of links between math and the arts. He defines mathematics as "the study of structure" and argues that structure is "an integral part of artistic practice." Ranging broadly across both disciplines, he lays out nine "blueprints," or mathematical ideas, that underpin creative endeavors, noting, for example, that the abstract paintings of Jackson Pollock are heavily dependent on fractals, or patterns of repeating shapes. Elsewhere, du Sautoy delves into music, demonstrating how French composer Olivier Messiaen's use of prime numbers brought dramatic tension to his Quartet for the End of Time; investigates architecture, showing how Zaha Hadid's Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, is dependent on Riemannian geometry, a branch of geometry used to describe curved space; and examines the written word, illustrating how circularity enriches the work of writers like Jorge Luis Borges. The book starts off strong, with many clear and eye-opening examples of underlying mathematical ideas, but as the author digs into more advanced concepts, like hyperbolic geometry, readers may find themselves lost. Still, du Sautoy constructs a solid bridge between the arts and sciences.
