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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 511.3 EAN: 9780393326291 ISBN: 0393326292 Label: W. W. Norton & Company Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 336 Publication Date: November 30, 2004 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Studio: W. W. Norton & Company Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Before discussing the merits of David Foster Wallace's Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, it is essential to define what the book is not. This volume in the "Great Discoveries" series is not a history of the personalities and social conditions that led to the "discovery" of infinity. Nor is it a narrative fixated on the cultish fear of--and obsession with--the infinite that has seemingly driven mathematicians insane over the centuries. Rather, Everything and More is a surprisingly rigorous march through the 2000 plus years of mathematical research that began with Aristotle; continued through Galileo, Isaac Newton, G.W. Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and J.W.R. Dedekind; and culminated in Georg Cantor and his Set Theory. The task Wallace (author of the bestseller Infinite Jest and other fiction) has set himself is enormously challenging: without radically compromising the complexity of the philosophy, metaphysics, or mathematics that underlies the evolving concept of infinity, present the material to a lay audience in a manner that is entertaining. To propel his narrative, Wallace even develops a style that mirrors the mathematical language he probes. One difficulty in his focus on concepts and not a strict human chronology, though, is that his structure is dependent on frequent digressions (especially early on). Patience is required. Wallace demands that his reader walk through the equations, study the graphs and charts, and relearn college-level concepts to follow along on the exploration. Indeed, after one wrenching dip into Zenos paradoxes, Wallace spouts at his imagined complaining audience: "Deal." But the book should be deemed a success. If one grants him the attention he requires, Wallace has made the trip richly rewarding. --Patrick OKelley Product Description: The best-selling author of Infinite Jest on the two-thousand-year-old quest to understand infinity. One of the outstanding voices of his generation, David Foster Wallace has won a large and devoted following for the intellectual ambition and bravura style of his fiction and essays. Now he brings his considerable talents to the history of one of math's most enduring puzzles: the seemingly paradoxical nature of infinity. Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? The nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's answer to this question not only surprised him but also shook the very foundations upon which math had been built. Cantor's counterintuitive discovery of a progression of larger and larger infinities created controversy in his time and may have hastened his mental breakdown, but it also helped lead to the development of set theory, analytic philosophy, and even computer technology. Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics. About the series:Great Discoveries brings together renowned writers from diverse backgrounds to tell the stories of crucial scientific breakthroughs—the great discoveries that have gone on to transform our view of the world. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - So long and thanks for all the footnotes...Since DFW has committed suicide, we will not see an edition revised by him. In re-reading the reviews, it appears that style means a lot. I personally found the book witty. It was a little slow sometimes because of the convolutions he introduced in style, but mostly I kept plowing (and chuckling) through. The librarian who sent back the book did a disservice to some readers. Not everyone likes to learn in the same way. With that kind of attitude, many years ago I would have had Rudin's books removed ... Read More Rating:  - Worst-written book I have ever read.I was expecting an exciting book. I was disappointed. This book has no chapters, lots of text message abbreviations, and many phrases ending in a period. Three-quarters of this book is background information. When the payoff comes, actually talking about infinities, the reationship among alelf null, cardinality c, and alef 1 is left as a "problem for the reader" for 20 pages! Rating: - Everything and Less.I (and many of my professional scientist colleagues) thought Gleick's "Chaos" was one of the worst books ever written on math - so confusing and uninstructive it called the whole subject into question. So it is not surprising Gleick praises this book: it is worse than "Chaos". The grammar, punctuation, and style are so tangled I found myself rereading passage after passage to sort out Wallace's meaning. He uses dozens of obscure, undefined, unusual, and unobvious abbreviations, with the index to ... Read More Rating:  - Poorly written and with some serious error(s)I suppose this might just be his style of writing but I just can't stand it. Having read 9 other math related books over the past month, this was a huge disappointment. He uses all sorts of acronyms and idiosyncrasies that just go too far. I got half way through it and then decided to skim seeing if I could find anything that caught my eye. Thinking maybe his discussion of the Continuum Hypothesis should be good, I read that. Of course, he misstated it, confusing which equality was known and which was ... Read More Rating: - Please enter a title for your reviewthis book offers no recommendation for what mathematical principles a reader should be familiar with before starting it but any claim of it being accessable to an average reader would be misleading. if seems not only like no attempt was made to relate most of what is being described to any commonsense foundation, but that it was academically overwritten into a code that even someone who already knew all the information contained in the book would have trouble following. in my ironic experience the ... Read More |
