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Mathematics: The Science of Patterns: The Search for Order in Life, Mind and the Universe (Scientific American Paperback Library)

Mathematics: The Science of Patterns: The Search for Order in Life, Mind and the Universe (Scientific American Paperback Library)
By Keith Devlin

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Average customer review:
See mathematics in a new way, as the science of patterns. A beautifully-illustrated book that will help your students appreciate the breadth and depth of mathematics.

Product Description

"The great book of nature," said Galileo, "can be read only by those who know the language in which it is written. And this language is mathematics." A richly illustrated celebration of the beauty and elegance of this ever-evolving language, Mathematics: The Science of Patterns explores the many ways mathematics helps us understand our perceptions of reality--both the physical, biological, and social worlds without, and the realm of ideas and thoughts within.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #644645 in Books
  • Published on: 1997
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 216 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
A book such as this belongs in the personal library of everyone interested in learning about some of the most subtle and profound works of the human spirit. -- American Scientist, July/August 1995

To most people, mathematics means working with numbers. But as Keith Devlin shows in Mathematics: The Science of Patterns, this definition has been out of date for nearly 2,500 years. Mathematicians now see their work as the study of patterns real or imagined, visual or mental, arising from the natural world or from within the human mind. Using this basic definition as his central theme, Devlin explores the patterns of counting, measuring, reasoning, motion, shape, position, and prediction, revealing the powerful influence mathematics has over our perception of reality. Interweaving historical highlights and current developments, and using a minimum of formulas, Devlin celebrates the precision, purity, and elegance of mathematics. 150 illustrations. -- Book Description

Review

"A book such as this belongs in the personal library of everyone interested in learning about some of the most subtle and profound works of the human spirit."—American Scientist"What is mathematics? Keith Devlin has answered with a magnificent panoply of all the major domains of mathematics."—Martin Gardner"Devlin's book is hugely successful in introducing the lay reader to the real spirit of mathematics and in bringing that reader to some appreciation of the research frontier."—American Mathematical Society"An engaging and attractive presentation of some of the principle ideas of mathematical thought. Keith Devlin has skillfully blended the old and the new."—Philip J. Davis, Brown University"A wonderful creation, interesting in its content and beautiful in its design. I predict great success for what is probably the most visually striking mathematics book anyone has ever seen."—William Dunham, author of Journey Through Genius and The Mathematical Universe

About the Author

Keith Devlin is Dean of the School of Science at Saint Mary's College of California and Senior Researcher at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information. A key participant in the six-part PBS television series "Life by the Numbers," he is the author of Life by the Numbers; Goodbye, Descartes; Logic and Information; Mathematics: The New Golden Age; and InfoSense: Turning Information into Knowledge.

Customer Reviews

Beautifully illustrated, clear and engaging5
Keith Devlin is one of the best popular mathematics writers around, and this is one of his best works. The six chapters cover number theory, set theory, calculus, group theory and topology; but to state it baldly like this is to miss the main value of this seductively illustrated book. Devlin titles his chapters innocuously--"Shape", or "Position"--and the initial discussion, couched generally in English, not mathematics, is so clear that a math-phobic can understand it. By the end of each chapter a great deal of fascinating mathematics has been described, and in some cases the formal basis is sketched--but the emphasis is always on narration, and a lay reader who doesn't even want to understand mathematics can still read this and get a sense of the dramatic history of mathematics. And of the dramatis personae, too; one nice feature is the large number of good pictures of mathematicians, including several more recent figures such as Ribet and Thurston.

Devlin states at the end that he decided to exclude many areas of mathematics in order to focus more effectively on what he did cover. As a result there is little or no coverage of chaos theory, game theory, catastrophe theory, or a long list of other topics. The fact is there will always be holes in a book this size--mathematics has expanded so much in the last hundred years that even a book ten times this size could barely survey it. The decision to focus was a good one, and the subjects chosen are good: the truly exciting stories are here: Archimedes, Fermat, Gauss, Galois, Riemann, Wiles, and many more.

The illustrations deserve an extra comment. I've already mentioned the pictures of mathematicians. There are good diagrams, of the quality you'd expect from Scientific American. There are also plenty of pictures of the sort you see in every maths book of this kind--Escher tessellations, Kepler's nested Platonic solids, a Durer perspective drawing. But there are several more that I've never seen (and I've read a lot of these books). Two notable pictures: a cardboard model of an aperiodic tiling of space, by John Conway; and a picture of a set of tiles at a Dutch high school, designed by Escher: I'm an Escher fan and have never seen these before.

Potential purchasers should note, by the way, that this book was reworked into Devlin's "Language of Mathematics". In Devlin's words (not from either book): "The Language of Mathematics is a restructuring of Science of Patterns that omits most of the color illustrations (a minus) but has two new chapters covering topics not in Science of Patterns (a plus). If you want lots of color, go for patterns; Language of Mathematics covers more ground."

This is a fine book. Strongly recommended.

Easy to Understand, Hard to Put Down5
This book is a brilliant example of mathematics at it's best. It is from Scientific American, so you know you can trust it. And it is written at an understandable level, quite a feat for many very complex topics. The book features incredible illustrations, every concept is laid out in a colorful image. If you like the works of M.C. Escher, you will like this book. It has a lot of substance to it, and it will keep you busy thinking for a long time, and that's time well spent

Imaginative, Engaging,Fascinating, Delightul5
This marvelous book to explains to non-mathematicians the joy, beauty and power of mathematics. Each topic is presented in an original manner with alot of colorful illustrations to delight the eye and mind. Devlin shows how mathematical thinking is critical to our exploration of the world around us. This is one my top ten of all time list