Mathematics, poetry and beauty / Ron Aharoni, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Aharoni, Ron.

Standardized Title:

Matemaṭiḳah, shirah ṿe-yofi. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mathematical recreations.

Mathematics--Study and teaching.

Mathematics.

Poetry in mathematics education.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Jersey : World Scientific, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

What does mathematics have to do with poetry? Seemingly, nothing. Mathematics deals with abstractions while poetry with emotions. And yet, the two share something essential: Beauty. "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare", says the title of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. "Mathematics, Poetry and Beauty" tries to solve the secret of the similarity between the two domains. It tries to explain how a mathematical argument and a poem can move us in the same way. Mathematical and poetic techniques are compared, with the aim of showing how they evoke the same sense of beauty. The reader may find that, as Bertrand Russell said, "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty hold and austere, like that of sculpture ... sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show".

Contents:

Introduction: magic

Mathematics and poetry

Displacement

pt. I. Order. The curious case of the ants on the pole

Hidden order

To discover or to invent

Order and beauty

Mathematical harmonies

Why [symbol] is not a rational number

The real numbers

The miracle of order

Simple conjectures, complex proofs

Independent events

pt. II. How mathematicians and poets think. Poetic image, mathematical image

The power of the oblique

Compression

Mathematical ping-pong

The book in heaven

Poetical ping-pong

Laws of conservation

An idea from somewhere else

Three types of mathematics

Topology

Matchmaking

Imagination

A magic number

Reality or imagination

Unexpected combinations

What is mathematics?

Deep tautologies

Symmetry

Impossibility

Infinitely large

Cantor's story

The most beautiful proof?

Paradoxes and oxymorons

Self-reference and Godel's theorem

Halfway to infinity: large numbers

Infinitely small

Infinitely many numbers having a finite sum

Twists

pt. III. Two levels of perception. Knowing without knowing

Content and husk

Change

Estrangement

An endless encounter.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

981-4602-95-7

OCLC:

900633323