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Product Description
'Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.' - Douglas Adams, "Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". We human beings have trouble with infinity - yet infinity is a surprisingly human subject. Philosophers and mathematicians have gone mad contemplating its nature and complexity - yet it is a concept routinely used by schoolchildren. Exploring the infinite is a journey into paradox. Here is a quantity that turns arithmetic on its head, making it feasible that 1 = 0. Here is a concept that enables us to cram as many extra guests as we like into an already full hotel. Most bizarrely of all, it is quite easy to show that there must be something bigger than infinity - when it surely should be the biggest thing that could possibly be. Brian Clegg takes us on a fascinating tour of that borderland between the extremely large and the ultimate that takes us from Archimedes, counting the grains of sand that would fill the universe, to the latest theories on the physical reality of the infinite. Full of unexpected delights, whether St Augustine contemplating the nature of creation, Newton and Leibniz battling over ownership of calculus, or Cantor struggling to publicise his vision of the transfinite, infinity's fascination is in the way it brings together the everyday and the extraordinary, prosaic daily life and the esoteric. Whether your interest in infinity is mathematical, philosophical, spiritual or just plain curious, this accessible book offers a stimulating and entertaining read.
About the Author
Brian Clegg is author of the highly acclaimed Light Years and The First Scientist. While working for British Airways he set up the Emerging Technologies Group, responsible for researching cutting-edge technologies. He currently runs his own creative consultancy business.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
There are better works around,
By Matt Westwood (Reading, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Brief History of Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable (Paperback)
If I'd not read Rucker's work on the subject (Infinity and The Mind), I might have thought this was pretty cool. But having said that, we may be reaching saturation point on the books about mathematicians (which this seems to be) - we need more about the *maths*.
I think there's a perception that to keep it readable it needs to be dumbed down. There's a lot of that going on. It's possible to explain *everything* in simple terms if you try hard enough. Maybe Clegg hasn't tried all that hard, or maybe he's scared of alienating the casual reader. Whatever, he doesn't do much for the mathematically literate who want to get something out of this. There's not actually all that much.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An easy way to infinity,
By
This review is from: Brief History of Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable (Paperback)
I was a little disappointed that works and discoveries about infinity was not treated in more detail. Instead, many of the pages are used for biographies; The life and doings of a lot of mathematicians are covered from childhood to death. This of course can be (or is) very interesting, but was not what I excpected. I also got a feeling that this was done in part to avoid writing more about infinity, which of course is a much more difficult topic. The book is intended for a reader with little mathematical background, and this may be the reason why the author avoids difficult questions. There are good and readable presentations of some of the wellknown paradoxes, which should make everyone wonder about the strange behavior when we move away from the finite experience.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
PUSHING BACK THE BOUNDARIES OF THINKING,
This review is from: Brief History of Infinity: The Quest to Think the Unthinkable (Paperback)
This excellent book helps readers get their minds around one of the most difficult concepts in the world if not the universe. The author approaches the subject of INFINITY from a number of fascinating angles and takes us through a historical journey to demonstrate how philosophers and mathematicians from Zeno, Plato and Aristotle through Galileo to Einstein, Leibniz and Hilbert have grappled with this most unthinkable of problems. I found this book thoroughly thought-provoking, highly stimulating and immensely rewarding. It enriched my knowledge and helped me push back the boundaries of my own thought processes.
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