Review of The Transcendental Tangle: Untying the Enigmatic Knots of the Infinite
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Shawn Swillinger
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- Latest Review: The Transcendental Tangle: Untying the Enigmatic Knots of the Infinite by Matthew Emmanuel Weinberg
Review of The Transcendental Tangle: Untying the Enigmatic Knots of the Infinite
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Transcendental Tangle: Untying the Enigmatic Knots of the Infinite" by Matthew Emmanuel Weinberg.]
If mathematics was poetry, this book would be a lengthy ode to and about transcendental numbers. If your view of the world is through the lens of mathematics, then this might be a book for you. If you are, like me, someone who just wants to know a bit beyond the basics of math and algebra, then this is probably not the book for you.
It wasn’t immediately apparent that to fully grasp this book, you need to already be pretty well versed in mathematics. The opening doesn’t reveal itself as a bit of complicated read. Rather, it reads more like like a love poem about the world of transcendental numbers. It promises to take the reader on a trip to a strange and exotic land of numbers that don’t play the way we’ve been taught they do. In fact there is lot of talk of imagining a journey, or imagining a world.
But, then as the chapters unfold, you may feel like a lot of homework has just landed on your lap. There are equations to solve and understand. Lots of equations to solve and understand. If you love math, this may be like a present at Christmas. There seems to be plenty of math meat on the bones.
I’m not afraid to say that I was quickly lost. I am not, as you may intuit, a math whiz. In this love story, you may have had me at hello, but you lost me at Leibniz formula.
But, the fact this reader here - the one with only basic math skills - couldn’t keep up shouldn’t be held against this book. The math is beyond me, but it’s not beyond everyone. And, even though the math was beyond me, the philosophical thoughts explored were not.
I might have been lost at Leibniz formula, but I was found again every time I was ready to give up only to get to parts of the book talking about philosophical ideas like Plato’s theory of forms and mathematical objects. That is to say, there is a lot more than just math going on here.
So, while I can’t speak to the math, I can say that this book as whole is an interesting read. If you like math - or probably more accurately, if you love math - this book might just strum your math heartstrings. It might even have an equation to explain the phenomenon. You’ll need to know more than basic mathematics to understand the equation though.
******
The Transcendental Tangle: Untying the Enigmatic Knots of the Infinite
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
If mathematics was poetry, this book would be a lengthy ode to and about transcendental numbers. If your view of the world is through the lens of mathematics, then this might be a book for you. If you are, like me, someone who just wants to know a bit beyond the basics of math and algebra, then this is probably not the book for you.
It wasn’t immediately apparent that to fully grasp this book, you need to already be pretty well versed in mathematics. The opening doesn’t reveal itself as a bit of complicated read. Rather, it reads more like like a love poem about the world of transcendental numbers. It promises to take the reader on a trip to a strange and exotic land of numbers that don’t play the way we’ve been taught they do. In fact there is lot of talk of imagining a journey, or imagining a world.
But, then as the chapters unfold, you may feel like a lot of homework has just landed on your lap. There are equations to solve and understand. Lots of equations to solve and understand. If you love math, this may be like a present at Christmas. There seems to be plenty of math meat on the bones.
I’m not afraid to say that I was quickly lost. I am not, as you may intuit, a math whiz. In this love story, you may have had me at hello, but you lost me at Leibniz formula.
But, the fact this reader here - the one with only basic math skills - couldn’t keep up shouldn’t be held against this book. The math is beyond me, but it’s not beyond everyone. And, even though the math was beyond me, the philosophical thoughts explored were not.
I might have been lost at Leibniz formula, but I was found again every time I was ready to give up only to get to parts of the book talking about philosophical ideas like Plato’s theory of forms and mathematical objects. That is to say, there is a lot more than just math going on here.
So, while I can’t speak to the math, I can say that this book as whole is an interesting read. If you like math - or probably more accurately, if you love math - this book might just strum your math heartstrings. It might even have an equation to explain the phenomenon. You’ll need to know more than basic mathematics to understand the equation though.
******
The Transcendental Tangle: Untying the Enigmatic Knots of the Infinite
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
