Book reviews – Page 4

The Seduction of Curves – by Allan McRobie, a review

NB. I was sent this book as a review copy.

http://i0.wp.com/press.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/covers/9780691175331.png?resize=384%2C480&ssl=1

From Princeton University Press

This is a beautiful book, it is a thought-provoking books and it is an informative book. It really is the intersection of mathematics, nature and art, and explores the three themes via the language of Catastrophe Theory, the theory by René Thom which aims to classify the possible folds in the solution space of natural systems and their two dimensional projections.

The book starts by introducing the alphabet of curves from the image of the human body, its curves and crevasses, its osculations and puckerings and from this alphabet it branches out to study the universe of catastrophes in the natural world.

As a fan/devotee/obsessive of atmospheric optics, the fold catastrophe which occurs in the production of the rainbow was bound to appeal to me. As Rene Descartes said in 1673:

A single ray of light has a pathetic repertoire, limited to bending and bouncing (into water, glass or air, and from mirrors).

…

By Jonathan Shock| October 1st, 2017|Book reviews, Reviews|1 Comment

From http://press.princeton.edu/titles/11024.html

This book was sent to me by the publisher as a review copy.

PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS OR PHILOSOPHY FOR MATHEMATICS? By Henri Laurie.

Review of Øystein Linnebo’s “Philosophy of Mathematics”, Princeton University Press, 2017. (This one is impressionistic; I hope to present a more conventional summary-of-contents review in due course).

I’ve just read Øystein Linnebo’s superb book on the philosophy of mathematics. It is very, very good. Superbly clear, concise, well organised, it gives not only a very accessible introduction but also takes the reader all the way to the cutting edge of what philosophers are doing in the philosophy of mathematics. Above all, Linnebo writes as a fully engaged philosopher and makes his preferred choice of philosophical position clear. But this is no mere polemic: I felt he clearly and forcefully presents the strengths and weaknesses of all the philosophical positions he discusses.

That said, even an introductory text in philosophy these days is not always easy reading.…

By Jonathan Shock| August 21st, 2017|Book reviews, Reviews|4 Comments

from Princeton University Press.

This book was sent to me by the publisher as a review copy.

This is a book of some impressive magnitude, both in terms of the time span that it covers (being millennia), as well as the ways in which it discusses the context and content of the ciphers, most of which, as the title suggests, are unsolved. The book starts with perhaps the most mysterious of all unbroken ciphers: The Voynich Manuscript (the entirety of which can be found here). This story in itself is perhaps the most fascinating in the history of all encrypted documents, and that we still don’t know if it truly contains anything of interest, or is just a cleverly constructed (though several hundred year old) hoax makes it all the more intriguing.

The writing rather effortlessly weaves between the potential origin stories, the history of the ownership of the manuscript and the attempts to decode it.…

By Jonathan Shock| July 29th, 2017|Book reviews, English, Level: Simple, Reviews|1 Comment

The best writing on mathematics 2016, edited by Mircea Pitici – a review

This book was sent to me by the publisher as a review copy.

http://press.princeton.edu/images/j10953.gif

It is not easy to write a review for an anthology of writings, but I think that in such cases what is best discussed is the choice of writing and its range, both topically and in terms of level. In this case we have some 30 short essays, covering a huge range of topics, as well as a real breadth of complexity. I will highlight some of my particular favourites, though I should say from the outset that I really enjoyed reading just about everything in this book. There were perhaps two or three posts which didn’t resonate with me, but out of 30, that is pretty good, given my personal tastes.

The collection starts with a lovely essay discussing the interplay between the teaching, and the practice of mathematics, and in particular the role of rigour, formality and proof in these two somewhat separate directions.…

By Jonathan Shock| April 3rd, 2017|Book reviews, Reviews|1 Comment

Cover page taken from http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10664.html

Roger Penrose is unquestionably a giant of 20th century theoretical physics. He has been enormously influential in diverse areas of both mathematics and physics, from the nature of spacetime to twistor theory, to geometrical structures and beyond. His famous, but perhaps less well-accepted theories on quantum consciousness, the collapse of the wave function, and visible imprints of cyclic cosmologies on our universe are thought-provoking, to say the least.

I will premise this review of his latest book “Faith, Fashion and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe” (FFaFitNPotU) with a slight detour to talk about his book “The Road to Reality” (TRtR), as there are some interesting contrasts, and similarities. TRtR, I see as a fascinating attempt to teach a large swathe of mathematics and physics from the ground up (wherever the ground really is). The book is some 1000 pages long, and goes at quite a pace through a number of very complicated topics, but it is enough, I believe, for the keen high school student to get an idea of some of the most important areas of mathematical physics.…

By Jonathan Shock| November 5th, 2016|Book reviews, Reviews|1 Comment

Group Theory in a Nutshell for Physicists, by Tony Zee – A review

I studied group theory for the first time around 15 years ago at the beginning of my PhD. There were six of us in the class, and I found it both a magical, as well as a mysterious subject. We had a great lecturer, but the way that the course was set up, and as a course designed for theoretical physicists, where the tools were more important than the construction of the tools, a lot of ideas were left as mysterious boxes where the right answers were guaranteed so long as the algorithm was correctly followed.

Tony Zee is known for his incredible ability to lead the student on a path from little knowledge, to an intuitive understanding of a topic in a seemingly painless process. His books are not necessarily the most technically rigorous (note that this doesn’t mean that they are wrong, but that the appropriate level of detail is chosen for the new learner such that the overarching ideas aren’t fogged in unnecessarily complication), but they are, in my opinion some of the best texts for taking a learner from nothing, to a working knowledge with which they can perform calculations that I’ve ever come across.…

By Jonathan Shock| September 11th, 2016|Book reviews, Reviews|1 Comment

The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics – a review

Disclaimer – I was sent a review copy of this book, upon request.

(Image taken from here).

A detailed review of a book like this is almost impossible, given both the range of topics, as well as the number of authors involved. However, I can attempt to give an overview of the feel and breadth of the book.

As can be seen from the table of contents, this is a book of absolutely vast scope, and such scope has both advantages and disadvantages. Its advantages are simply that it covers so many topics, that almost every aspect of applied mathematics that you could think of is included, from numerical techniques, to cell biology, from the theory of solitons to cosmology, from how to write a book for the general public to science in the media, from complex analysis to graph theory, and so many more areas besides. As such it is an amazing reference to give very useful leads to go into the world of research in applied mathematics.…

By Jonathan Shock| January 5th, 2016|Book reviews, Reviews|1 Comment

The Seduction of Curves – by Allan McRobie, a review

Philosophy of Mathematics, by Øystein Linnebo – A review, by Henri Laurie

Unsolved!: The History and Mystery of the World’s Greatest Ciphers from Ancient Egypt to Online Secret Societies by Craig P. Bauer – A review

The best writing on mathematics 2016, edited by Mircea Pitici – a review

Faith, Fashion and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, by Roger Penrose – a review

Group Theory in a Nutshell for Physicists, by Tony Zee – A review

The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics – a review