The Art of More
how mathematics created civilisation
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Publisher Description
Bestselling science writer Michael Brooks takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of civilisation, as he explains why maths is fundamental to our understanding of the world.
1, 2, 3 … ? The human brain isn’t wired for maths; beyond the number 3, it just sees ‘more’. So why bother learning it at all?
You might remember studying geometry, calculus, and algebra at school, but you probably didn’t realise — or weren’t taught — that these are the roots of art, architecture, government, and almost every other aspect of our civilisation. The mathematics of triangles enabled explorers to travel far across the seas and astronomers to map the heavens. Calculus won the Allies the Second World War and halted the HIV epidemic. And the mysterious Pi is one of the essential building blocks of the 21st century.
From ancient Egyptian priests to the Apollo astronauts, and Babylonian tax collectors to the MIT professor who invented juggling robots, join Michael Brooks and his extraordinarily eccentric cast of characters in discovering how maths shaped the world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Our way of life, our institutions, and our infrastructures" were all built on math, writes New Scientist editor Brooks in this savvy study (after 13 Things That Don't Make Sense). He begins by diligently explaining the basics of algebra, arithmetic, calculus, and geometry, and introducing key figures in math's history. There's Pythagoras and Isaac Newton, as well as lesser-known figures such as Claude Elwood Shannon, a pioneer in the information theory that undergirds today's communication technology, and William Rowan Hamilton, a 19th-century mathematician who was "obsessed with complex numbers." Brooks uses the work of these thinkers to break down the math behind facets of everyday life: he describes the statistics that underlie life expectancies; the equations that allow scientists to understand the cosmos; and the imaginary numbers that give guitar amplifiers their power. In his introduction, Brooks describes a point when a person hits their "mathematical limit" and gets overloaded, and encourages readers to avoid that feeling by approaching math with a sense of awe. He expertly maintains that spirit throughout and easily shows how, "through maths, we shape the world around us to give ourselves a better experience of being human." It's a show-stopping paean to the wonder of numbers.
