Mathematics without Apologies : : Portrait of a Problematic Vocation / / Michael Harris.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2014-2015
• VerfasserIn: Harris, Michael,
• TeilnehmendeR: Harris, Michael.
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2017]; ©2015
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (464 p.) :; 16 halftones. 34 line illus.

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface to the Paperback Edition -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Part I -- Chapter 1. Introduction: The Veil -- Chapter 2. How I Acquired Charisma -- Chapter 3. Not Merely Good, True, and Beautiful -- Chapter 4. Megaloprepeia -- Chapter 5. An Automorphic Reading of Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day (Interrupted by Elliptical Reflections on Mason & Dixon) -- Part II -- Chapter 6. Further Investigations of the Mind-Body Problem -- Chapter 7. The Habit of Clinging to an Ultimate Ground -- Chapter 8. The Science of Tricks -- Chapter 9. A Mathematical Dream and Its Interpretation -- Chapter 10. No Apologies -- Afterword. The Veil of Maya -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index of Mathematicians -- Subject Index