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Everything and More: A Compact History of [Infinity Symbol]

Everything and More: A Compact History of [Infinity Symbol]

by David Foster Wallace (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2003

    $6.24
Synopsis

One of the outstanding voices of his generation, David Foster Wallace has won a large and devoted following for the intellectual ambition and bravura style of his fiction and essays. Now he brings his considerable talents to the history of one of math's most enduring puzzles: the seemingly paradoxical nature of infinity. Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? The nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's answer to this question not only surprised him but also shook the very foundations upon which math had been built. Cantor's counterintuitive discovery of a progression of larger and larger infinities created controversy in his time and may have hastened his mental breakdown, but it also helped lead to the development of set theory, analytic philosophy, and even computer technology. Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 336
 Edition: 01
 Publisher: Orion
Published: 13 Nov 2003
ISBN 10: 0297645676
ISBN 13: 9780297645672
Book Overview: David Foster Wallace is a highly acclaimed writer with a devoted following An ambitious look at the world of applied mathematics

Media Reviews
The tics and pleasures of his prose are all present and correct. TIME OUT There aren't many books about mathematics that will have you laughing out loud, but this is one of them. It's a great read... takes a novelists (and novel) look at infinity , has the maths and the history, as well as dry and very funny asides and - most impressive of all - the flair and the style to pull all of it together. NEW SCIENTIST David Foster Wallace misses no opportunity away from the necessarily strict wording of mathematical argument for verbal play. -- ADAM MARS JONES THE OBSERVER REVIEW Weirdly wonderful. THE TELEGRAPH The 41-year-old Wallace is probably the most important novelist of his generation, and he has fans who will follow him even into differential equations. BOSTON GLOBE infinity is irresistible meat for the popularizer, and quite a few books in that vein have appeared over the years. Now, in Everything and More: A Compact History of 8 the celebrated author David Foster Wallace has set out to initiate readers into its mysteries. THE NEW YORKER Wallace approaches his subject matter with a surprising degree of humor, genuine enthusiasm, and technical depth. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR Wallace does an admirable job unwinding what he calls the Story of Infinity's overall dynamic, whereby certain paradoxes give rise to conceptual advances that can handle those original paradoxes but in turn give rise to new paradoxes, which then generate further conceptual advances, and so on. SALON Less than a third the size of Infinite Jest, Everything and More sees the king of cross-purposes taking on the biggest, most dread-inducing paradox of all, with results as thrilling and maddening, as open-ended and self-devouring, as much of his fiction. VILLAGE VOICE David Foster Wallace is a scarily smart writer THE ONION David Foster Wallace, author of the brainy best seller Infinite Jest, sees beauty in numbers and has found an engaging way to discuss them. WIRED Approachable, fun, entertaining, informative... keep reading with enjoyment and pleasure until you reach the end. FOCUS
Author Bio
David Foster Wallace is the award-winning author of two novels, two collections of stories, and a collection of essays. He lives in Berkeley, California