An insightful reflection on the mathematical soul
What do pure mathematicians do, and why do they do it? Looking beyond
the conventional answers--for the sake of truth, beauty, and practical
applications--this book offers an eclectic panorama of the lives and
values and hopes and fears of mathematicians in the twenty-first
century, assembling material from a startlingly diverse assortment of
scholarly, journalistic, and pop culture sources.
Drawing on his personal experiences and obsessions as well as the
thoughts and opinions of mathematicians from Archimedes and Omar Khayyám
to such contemporary giants as Alexander Grothendieck and Robert
Langlands, Michael Harris reveals the charisma and romance of
mathematics as well as its darker side. In this portrait of mathematics
as a community united around a set of common intellectual, ethical, and
existential challenges, he touches on a wide variety of questions, such
as: Are mathematicians to blame for the 2008 financial crisis? How can
we talk about the ideas we were born too soon to understand? And how
should you react if you are asked to explain number theory at a dinner
party?
Disarmingly candid, relentlessly intelligent, and richly entertaining,
Mathematics without Apologies takes readers on an unapologetic guided
tour of the mathematical life, from the philosophy and sociology of
mathematics to its reflections in film and popular music, with detours
through the mathematical and mystical traditions of Russia, India,
medieval Islam, the Bronx, and beyond.
