or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
27 used & new from £0.41
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless
 
See larger image 
Share your own customer images
Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless (Paperback)

by John D. Barrow (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
Price: £6.39 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
You Save: £2.60 (29%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In stock.
Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk. Gift-wrap available.

Only 5 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).

Want guaranteed delivery by Tuesday, November 10? Choose Express delivery at checkout. See Details
13 new from £3.59 14 used from £0.41
Other Editions: RRP: Our Price: Other Offers:
Hardcover 8 used & new from £10.86
Paperback (Reprint) 10 used & new from £8.99

Frequently Bought Together

The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless + Impossibility: Limits of Science and the Science of Limits + 100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know
Price For All Three: £20.35

Show availability and shipping details

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Impossibility: Limits of Science and the Science of Limits

Impossibility: Limits of Science and the Science of Limits

by John D. Barrow
4.2 out of 5 stars (5)  £6.98
100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know

100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know

by John D. Barrow
4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £6.98
The Book of Nothing

The Book of Nothing

by John D. Barrow
3.7 out of 5 stars (3)  £6.98
The Constants of Nature

The Constants of Nature

by John D. Barrow
4.5 out of 5 stars (2)  £6.98
New Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation

New Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation

by John D. Barrow
3.0 out of 5 stars (2)  £5.77
› Explore similar items

Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (3 Nov 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099443724
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099443728
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 180,875 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #31 in  Books > Science & Nature > Experiments, Instruments & Measurements > Time

    •  Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links

  (What is this?)
   Get Books at AbeBooks opens new browser window
www.AbeBooks.co.uk  -  More than 110 Million Books - Get your Books at AbeBooks.co.uk! 
  
 

Product Description

Review

"Praise for The Book of Nothing: 'Barrow explains nothing with great clarity, a lovely lightness of touch and enormous erudition. He has written an eligible bachelor of a book - witty, suave, rich and immensely learned.' Spectator. Praise for Theories of Everything: 'An exhilarating journey that cuts across a vast terrain of conceptuall and marks: from physics to metaphysics, mathematics to philosophy, and from mythology to theology.' New Scientist. Praise for Impossibility: 'For as good an account as you're going to get of where science stops, read this book.' Nature"


Product Description

Infinity is surely the strangest idea that humans have ever thought. Where did it come from and what is it telling us about our Universe? Can there actually be infinities? Or is infinity just a label for something that is never reached, no matter how long you go on counting? Are infinities like numbers, with some bigger than others, and one infinity at the top, bigger than all the rest? Can you do an infinite number of things in a finite amount of time? Is the Universe infinite? Is it infinitely old and will it continue to exist forever? Is matter infinitely divisible into ever-smaller pieces? But infinity is also the place where things happen that don't. All manner of strange paradoxes and fantasies characterise an infinite universe. If our Universe is infinite then an infinite number of exact copies of you are, at this very moment, reading an identical sentence on an identical planet somewhere else in the Universe. So what is it like to live in a Universe where nothing is original, where you can live forever, where anything that can be done, is done, over and over again? These are some of the deep questions that the idea of the infinite pushes us to ask. Throughout history, the infinite has been a dangerous idea. Many have lost their lives, their careers, or their freedom for talking about it. "The Infinite Book" will take you on a tour of these dangerous questions and the strange answers that scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and theologians have come up with to deal with its threats to our sanity.
See all Product Description

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 
(1)
(1)
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
See most popular tags

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless
58% buy the item featured on this page:
The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless 3.7 out of 5 stars (6)
£6.39
100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know
23% buy
100 Essential Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know 4.5 out of 5 stars (2)
£6.98
Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science
8% buy
Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science 5.0 out of 5 stars (3)
£16.01
Bad Science
6% buy
Bad Science 4.5 out of 5 stars (202)
£3.59
Explore similar items
 

Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Has its limits, 1 Feb 2006
By hwade17 (near Doncaster, West Riding) - See all my reviews
"Well," I said to myself, as I picked up The Infinite Book for a bargain, finite sum of money, "this ought to last a while".

There are a number of playful paradoxes on the theme of "infinite" books, and indeed Barrow mentions one of them in a chapter of his own "Infinite Book", a short story by Borges, in which a man finds a book with an infinite number of pages, which means that absolutely all knowledge, both true and false, is contained within it ... the answer to everything is always there, somewhere, but once you've lost your page the chances of ever finding it again are mathematically nil. However, this "Infinite Book" reminded me of a different sort of imaginary "infinite book" - a mathematical paradox, in which every successive page of a book is half the thickness of the previous one, so when you flip the book over to look at the last page, the last page doesn't exist.

Just like this latter "infinite book", it seemed to me that the content of "The Infinite Book" started out in the early pages as challenging, hefty, engaging - and then starts to become more flimsy and insubstantial as it goes on. It's as if the author started out with a terrific idea for a book (and the early chapters, about Cantor's infinities and the heresy of infinity, make for engrossing reading) but then ran out of ideas and had to pad it out to book length with in some places, frankly daft chapters about Infinite Machines and Living Forever. Increasingly the reader is asked to accept statements that challenge not only one's intuition but also the foregoing text, unless of course the current theory is truly so esoteric that it doesn't make sense to the ordinary brain. For instance, computers, we are told, have doubled in power every couple of years or so on average since about 1900 "which has led some people to speculate that eventually there may be machines capable of performing an infinite number of calculations." Oh, right, okay, says the reader, and when's that going to happen? No answer is given us here. Elsewhere in his book, Barrow tells us that the existence of an infinite number of universes, apparently, "implies" that everything exists and is infinitely repeated. It's hard to see why, though, since we have already been introduced to the idea that the number "1" for instance, is never, ever, repeated again in the infinitely long series of whole numbers. Perhaps universes are counted as a different order of infinity. But it isn't clear. Another thing which slightly jarred was that, even though the existence of Infinity is still (the author tells us) a matter of philosophical speculation among mathematicians, the philosophy in this book seems to be pitched at a considerably lower level than the science ("endless" confused with "timeless" seemed to me like a bit of failed expository legerdemain). This is annoying, because presumably a book called "The Infinite Book" will be read by people with an interest in both camps.

Nonetheless Barrow writes well, and has also provided a very comprehensive bibliography for anyone wanting to read further about a fascinating subject, but despite its title, in the end this is a book that whets the appetite, rather than trying to cover the entire field of his subject - which would admittedly be a daunting undertaking!

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Infinity Math or Theology, 8 Jun 2009
By Bill Barlow "bill barlow" (Hanmer, North Wales) - See all my reviews
This book is a wonderful read. The Math is kept descriptive rather than technical and is easy to follow. The writing is clear and easy to read. The theories and concepts however stretch the mind. In contemplating the nature of infinity we are taken into the vast and the tiny. It crosses the boundary into theology and I was quick to pass it on to a clergyman friend.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Best Barrow I have read, 31 May 2008
By Robert Zbodak "roris" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I have read already several books from John D Barrow (Theories of Everything, Book of Nothing, Pi in the Sky), and I found some of them a bit vague and with some irrelevant chapters. To me, this one is the best one from Barrow I have read. The topic could have been discussed even more in depth, but overall, the book kept me turning pages from the beginningto end, and I have not read many better written popular science books. Even though there were some, therefore I give 4 of 5 :-))
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Brain dead and a terrible read
This book makes for terrible reading. For some reason the author insists on inserting sometimes barely related quotes at the beginning of each chapter and sub-chapter. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Crouching Soldier, Hidden Taliban

3.0 out of 5 stars Quite a disappointment
I find myself agreeing almost 100% with hwade17. His analysis is detailed and excellent. For all the reasons he gives I found it quite a disappointment. Read more
Published 12 months ago by J. M. Aucken

5.0 out of 5 stars An easy read on a hard subject
A very well written book which makes a hard subject deceptively easy. Very light on equations and the "frightening" bits of mathematics, very strong on well written explanations... Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2006 by Alec Cawley

Only search this product's reviews


Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
   
Related forums

Listmania!

Create a Listmania! list

Look for similar items by category

Look for similar items by subject














i.e., each product must be in subject 1 AND subject 2 AND ...

Feedback

Ad

Your Recent History

 (What's this?)

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.