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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

    Paperback 2005

    $8.64
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.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 368
 Edition: New Ed
 Publisher: Phoenix
Published: 02 Jun 2005
ISBN 10: 0753818825
ISBN 13: 9780753818824
Book Overview: Like black holes, infinity is one of those mindblowing subjects that excite general fascination but can seem inaccessible to the non-scientist. However, as a novelist, David Foster Wallace has the popular touch '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 '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' New Yorker.

Media Reviews
Our lives keep getting fuller and faster - but remain finite. Perhaps that is what makes the concept of inifinity, the subject of this study, so fascinating. THE TIMES No one can accuse Foster Wallace of being stuffy; his book is engagingly dishevelled... Foster Wallace shows his love for Maths. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
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