Product Description

Infinity is a concept that fascinates everyone from a seven-year-old child to a maths professor. So remarkable and strange is it that contemplating it has driven at least two great mathematicians over the edge into insanity. Where did the concept of infinity come from? Who were the people who originally defined and later refined this paradoxical quantity? Why is infinity, a concept we can never experience or truly grasp, at the heart of science? How can some infinities be bigger than others? An exploration of the most mind-boggling feature of maths and physics, this work examines amazing paradoxes, for example Hilbert's Hotel. This imaginary resort has an infinite number of rooms, which all happen to be occupied. Unfortunately an endless coach turns up carrying an infinite number of new guests. It's not a problem though - it's easy to prove they can all be accommodated. The book also looks at: the people who devised and refined the concept, the many mind-bending paradoxes of infinity, infinity's place at the heart of mathematics and science in processes such as calculus, how dividing by zero brings infinity into view and infinity and cosmos.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8073 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

An easy way to infinity
I was a little disappointed that works and discoveries about infinity was not treated in more detail. Instead, many of the pages are used for biographies; The life and doings of a lot of mathematicians are covered from childhood to death. This of course can be (or is) very interesting, but was not what I excpected. I also got a feeling that this was done in part to avoid writing more about infinity, which of course is a much more difficult topic. The book is intended for a reader with little mathematical background, and this may be the reason why the author avoids difficult questions. There are good and readable presentations of some of the wellknown paradoxes, which should make everyone wonder about the strange behavior when we move away from the finite experience.

PUSHING BACK THE BOUNDARIES OF THINKING
This excellent book helps readers get their minds around one of the most difficult concepts in the world if not the universe. The author approaches the subject of INFINITY from a number of fascinating angles and takes us through a historical journey to demonstrate how philosophers and mathematicians from Zeno, Plato and Aristotle through Galileo to Einstein, Leibniz and Hilbert have grappled with this most unthinkable of problems. I found this book thoroughly thought-provoking, highly stimulating and immensely rewarding. It enriched my knowledge and helped me push back the boundaries of my own thought processes.

Excellent
This is a very interesting and informative description of the history of infinity.

Infinity is a fascinating (and complex) subject but Brian Clegg does an extremely good job of presenting it in a highly readable and essentially non-mathematical way. I have a mathematical background but this book should be accessible to all.

I tend to agree with the previous reviewer who criticised presentation of some of the more complex mathematics in particular the higher alephs and Godel. However, I do not believe that these issues significantly detracted from my enjoyment of the book (mainly because I had not expectation that they would be covered well).

An excellent popular science/mathematics book - highly recommended to all