Reviews

Die Entdeckung des Unendlichen : Georg Cantor und die Welt der Mathematik by Thorsten Schmidt, David Foster Wallace, Helmut Reuter

aleffert's review against another edition

3.0

This book has a serious Law of the Excluded Middle problem. Not just technically - he cites LEM (these things always end up abbreviated in typical DFW style) in totally unnecessary cases - but in that the book is neither A nor not A. David Foster Wallace thinks that the development of the mathematical understanding of infinity is deeply interesting and this book is him telling you about it. He's right. It is deeply interesting. The problem is how he decides to tell you about it. And in some ways he is stuck with the usual dilemma of pop science books: the intersection to technical detail, mathematical accessibility, and technical accessibility. He pursues this as a largely mathematical development, running through many of the relevant core developments from Pythagoras to Gödel. Deliberately skipping some interesting side stories about the personalities involved. This is fine, there are plenty of biographies of the mathematicians involved, though I'm sure their not usually told with DFW's gift for gusto. The problem is that he runs through the math, skimming the details, missing some rigor, and even getting stuff wrong, but without adding in much of the bravura writing on which his deserved reputation stands. I suspect that much of the book would have been incomprehensible to someone without a solid math background, at which point there is very little new here though he does put things in a nice progression.

gjmaupin's review against another edition

4.0

My head hurts so much.

poopdealer's review against another edition

4.0

idk anything about math so i cant be 100% but im pretty sure this isnt right lol

rory11's review against another edition

I wanted to love this book...I thought it would be a strange--albeit fascinating--look at infinity. A rare math book taught by a brilliant writer. Infinity given the same treatment as the lobster.

But this book was just a little too rambling for it to be interesting. It took math concepts which I love and adore and made me bored. I still love DFW for his essays (he could very well be the type of writer which I only enjoy 20 pages at a time) and I still love infinity. But I might let them stay separate from here on out...this combination just wasn't my cup of tea.

portlandcat's review against another edition

2.0

I mean…I’m as much a fan of Fourier Transforms as the next person. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

hjfritz27's review against another edition

5.0

Whoa.

"I am large. I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman

wells140's review against another edition

4.0

Finally done with this book. Throughout the book I wondered if I had made a grave mistake reading it without more mathematical knowledge. However, I did learn a lot about the history of math, and I especially liked reading about Zeno's paradoxes. I learned about Newton and Leibniz and other mathematicians I hadn't heard of before but that are important. I've also got several concepts to look into. I think it was indeed worth my time.

andykhardy's review against another edition

5.0

Just a wonderful wacky introduction to real analysis, logic, and set theory. It dives head first into some wacky formal results like Dedekind cuts or Bolzano Weirestrass Theorem that are used to springboard even casual readers into the swamp of modern set theory, complete with a discussion of the Continuum Hypothesis.

The ending did feel quite abrupt and unfinished, but I guess that's why math departments still exist.

gomfa's review against another edition

challenging funny informative lighthearted medium-paced

5.0

bakudreamer's review against another edition

Just read some of this, will have to get back to it someday