Our knowledge of mathematics has structured much of what we think
we know about ourselves as individuals and communities, shaping our
psychologies, sociologies, and economies. In pursuit of a more
predictable and more controllable cosmos, we have extended
mathematical insights and methods to more and more aspects of the
world. Today those powers are greater than ever, as computation is
applied to virtually every aspect of human activity. Yet, in the
process, are we losing sight of the human? When we apply
mathematics so broadly, what do we gain and what do we lose, and at
what risk to humanity? These are the questions that David and
Ricardo L. Nirenberg ask in Uncountable, a provocative account of
how numerical relations became the cornerstone of human claims to
knowledge, truth, and certainty. There is a limit to these
number-based claims, they argue, which they set out to explore. The
Nirenbergs, father and son, bring together their backgrounds in
math, history, literature, religion, and philosophy, interweaving
scientific experiments with readings of poems, setting crises in
mathematics alongside world wars, and putting medieval Muslim and
Buddhist philosophers in conversation with Einstein, Schroedinger,
and other giants of modern physics. The result is a powerful lesson
in what counts as knowledge and its deepest implications for how we
live our lives.
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