Product Description

'Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.' - Douglas Adams, "Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". We human beings have trouble with infinity - yet infinity is a surprisingly human subject. Philosophers and mathematicians have gone mad contemplating its nature and complexity - yet it is a concept routinely used by schoolchildren. Exploring the infinite is a journey into paradox. Here is a quantity that turns arithmetic on its head, making it feasible that 1 = 0. Here is a concept that enables us to cram as many extra guests as we like into an already full hotel. Most bizarrely of all, it is quite easy to show that there must be something bigger than infinity - when it surely should be the biggest thing that could possibly be. Brian Clegg takes us on a fascinating tour of that borderland between the extremely large and the ultimate that takes us from Archimedes, counting the grains of sand that would fill the universe, to the latest theories on the physical reality of the infinite. Full of unexpected delights, whether St Augustine contemplating the nature of creation, Newton and Leibniz battling over ownership of calculus, or Cantor struggling to publicise his vision of the transfinite, infinity's fascination is in the way it brings together the everyday and the extraordinary, prosaic daily life and the esoteric. Whether your interest in infinity is mathematical, philosophical, spiritual or just plain curious, this accessible book offers a stimulating and entertaining read.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20738 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

About the Author
Brian Clegg is author of the highly acclaimed Light Years and The First Scientist. While working for British Airways he set up the Emerging Technologies Group, responsible for researching cutting-edge technologies. He currently runs his own creative consultancy business.

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