What is mathematics? How was it created and who were and are the people creating and practicing it? Can one describe its development and role in the history of scientific thinking and can one predict the future? This book is a thought-provoking attempt to answer such questions and to suggest the scope and depth of the subject.The volume begins with a discussion of problems involving integers in which ideas of infinity appear and proceeds through the evolution of more abstract ideas about numbers and geometrical objects. The authors show how mathematicians came to consider groups of general transformations and then, looking upon the sets of such subjects as spaces, how they attempted to build theories of structures in general. Also considered here are the relations between mathematics and the empirical disciplines, the profound effect of high-speed computers on the scope of mathematical experimentation, and the question of how much mathematical progress depends on invention and how much on discovery. For mathematicians, physicists, or any student of the evolution of mathematical thought, this highly regarded study offers a stimulating investigation of the essential nature of mathematics.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Dover Publications Inc.
ISBN-13
9780486670850
eBay Product ID (ePID)
96562190
Product Key Features
Author
Stanislaw M. Ulam, Mark Kac
Publication Name
Mathematics and Logic: Retrospect and Prospects
Format
Paperback
Language
English
Subject
Mathematics
Publication Year
1992
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
192 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
210mm
Item Width
144mm
Item Weight
217g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Stanislaw M. Ulam, Mark Kac
Series Title
Dover Books on Mathematics
Country/Region of Manufacture
United States
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