What does mathematics have to do with poetry? Seemingly, nothing. Mathematics deals with abstractions while poetry with emotions. And yet, the two share something essential: Beauty. “Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare,” says the title of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. “Mathematics, Poetry and Beauty” tries to solve the secret of the similarity between the two domains. It tries to explain how a mathematical argument and a poem can move us in the same way. Mathematical and poetic techniques are compared, with the aim of showing how they evoke the same sense of beauty. The reader may find that, as Bertrand Russell said, “Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty hold and austere, like that of sculpture … sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.” Contents: Order: The Curious Case of the Ants on the Pole Hidden Order To Discover or to Invent Order and Beauty Mathematical Harmonies Why ?2 is Not a Rational Number The Real Numbers The Miracle of Order Simple Conjectures, Complex Proofs Independent Events How Mathematicians and Poets Think: Poetic Image, Mathematical Image The Power of the Oblique Compression Mathematical Ping-Pong The Book in Heaven Poetical Ping-Pong Laws of Conservation An Idea from Somewhere Else Three Types of Mathematics Topology Matchmaking Imagination A Magic Number Reality or Imagination Unexpected Combinations What is Mathematics? Deep Tautologies Symmetry Impossibility Infinitely Large Cantor's Story The Most Beautiful Proof? Paradoxes and Oxymorons Self-Reference and Gödel's Theorem Halfway to Infinity: Large Numbers Infinitely Small Infinitely Many Numbers Having a Finite Sum Twists Two Levels of Perception: Knowing without Knowing Content and Husk Change Estrangement An Endless Encounter Appendix A: Mathematical Fields Appendix B: Sets of Numbers Appendix C: Poetical Mechanisms Mentioned in the Book
- ISBN: 978-981-4602-94-5
- Editorial: WORLD SCIENTIFIC PUB.CO.PTE.
- Encuadernacion: Rústica
- Páginas: 272
- Fecha Publicación: 01/02/2015
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: