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.”
Readership: Those interested in Mathematics, those interested in poetry, and the general public.
Author(s): Ron Aharoni
Edition: 1
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Co
Year: 2014
Language: English
Pages: 241
Tags: Математика;Популярная математика;
Order:
The Curious Case of the Ants on the Pole
Hidden Order
To Discover or to Invent
Order and Beauty
Mathematical Harmonies
Why √2 is Not a Rational Number
The Real Numbers
The Miracle of Order
Simple Conjectures, Complex Proofs
Independent Events
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 Gödel's Theorem
Halfway to Infinity: Large Numbers
Infinitely Small
Infinitely Many Numbers Having a Finite Sum
Twists
Two Levels of Perception:
Knowing without Knowing
Content and Husk
Change
Estrangement
An Endless Encounter
Appendix A: Mathematical Fields
Appendix B: Sets of Numbers
Appendix C: Poetical Mechanisms Mentioned in the Book
