How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics - Softcover

Byers, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691145997 ISBN 13: 9780691145990

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2010

Synopsis

To many outsiders, mathematicians appear to think like computers, grimly grinding away with a strict formal logic and moving methodically--even algorithmically--from one black-and-white deduction to another. Yet mathematicians often describe their most important breakthroughs as creative, intuitive responses to ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox. A unique examination of this less-familiar aspect of mathematics, How Mathematicians Think reveals that mathematics is a profoundly creative activity and not just a body of formalized rules and results. Nonlogical qualities, William Byers shows, play an essential role in mathematics. Ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes can arise when ideas developed in different contexts come into contact. Uncertainties and conflicts do not impede but rather spur the development of mathematics. Creativity often means bringing apparently incompatible perspectives together as complementary aspects of a new, more subtle theory. The secret of mathematics is not to be found only in its logical structure. The creative dimensions of mathematical work have great implications for our notions of mathematical and scientific truth, and How Mathematicians Think provides a novel approach to many fundamental questions. Is mathematics objectively true? Is it discovered or invented? And is there such a thing as a "final" scientific theory? Ultimately, How Mathematicians Think shows that the nature of mathematical thinking can teach us a great deal about the human condition itself.

About this title

Review:

"Byers gives a compelling presentation of mathematical thinking where ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox, rather than being eliminated, play a central creative role."--David Ruelle, author of Chance and Chaos

"I strongly recommend this book. The discussions of mathematical ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox are excellent. In addition to mathematics, the book draws on other sciences, as well as philosophy, literature, and history. The historical discussions are particularly interesting and are woven into the mathematics."--Joseph Auslander, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland

"An amazing tour de force. Utterly new, utterly truthful."--Reuben Hersh, author of What Is Mathematics, Really?

"This is an important book, one that should cause an epoch-making change in the way we think about mathematics. While mathematics is often presented as an immutable, absolute science in which theorems can be proved for all time in a platonic sense, here we see the creative, human aspect of mathematics and its paradoxes and conflicts. This has all the hallmarks of a must-read book."--David Tall, coauthor of Algebraic Number Theory and Fermat's Last Theorem

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2007"

"Ambitious, accessible and provocative...[In] How Mathematicians Think, William Byers argues that the core ingredients of mathematics are not numbers, structure, patterns or proofs, but ideas...Byers' view springs from the various facets of his career as a researcher and administrator (and, he says, his interest in Zen Buddhism). But it is his experience as a teacher that gives the book some of its extraordinary salience and authority...Good mathematics teaching should not banish ambiguity, but enable students to master it...Everyone should read Byers...His lively and important book establishes a framework and vocabulary to discuss doing, learning, and teaching mathematics, and why it matters."---Donal O'Shea, Nature

"From Byers's book, if you work at it, you will learn some mathematics and, more important, you may begin to see how mathematicians think."---Peter Cameron, Times Higher Education Supplement

"As William Byers points out in this courageous book, mathematics today is obsessed with rigor, and this actually suppresses creativity.... Perfectly formalized ideas are dead, while ambiguous, paradoxical ideas are pregnant with possibilities and lead us in new directions: they guide us to new viewpoints, new truths.... Bravo, Professor Byers, and my compliments to Princeton University Press for publishing this book."---Gregory Chaitin, New Scientist

"Many people assume that mathematicians' thinking processes are strictly methodical and algorithmic. Integrating his experience as a mathematician and as a Buddhist, Byers examines the validity of this assumption. Much of mathematical thought is based on intuition and is in fact outside the realm of black-and-white logic, he asserts. Byers introduces and defines terms such as mathematical ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox and demonstrates how creative ideas emerge out of them. He gives as examples some of the seminal ideas that arose in this manner, such as the resolution of the most famous mathematical problem of all time, the Fermat conjecture. Next, he takes a philosophical look at mathematics, pondering the ambiguity that he believes lies at its heart. Finally, he asks whether the computer accurately models how math is performed. The author provides a concept-laden look at the human face of mathematics."--Science News

"This book is a radically new account of mathematical discourse and mathematical thinking...What Byers's book reveals is that ambiguity is always present...You can't quite say that nobody has said this before. But nobody has said it before in this all-encompassing, coherent way, and in this readable, crystal clear style...This book strikes me as profound, unpretentious, and courageous."---Reuben Hersh, Notices of the AMS

From the Back Cover:

"An amazing tour de force. Utterly new, utterly truthful."--Reuben Hersh, author of What Is Mathematics, Really?

"Byers gives a compelling presentation of mathematical thinking where ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox, rather than being eliminated, play a central creative role."--David Ruelle, author of Chance and Chaos

"This is an important book, one that should cause an epoch-making change in the way we think about mathematics. While mathematics is often presented as an immutable, absolute science in which theorems can be proved for all time in a platonic sense, here we see the creative, human aspect of mathematics and its paradoxes and conflicts. This has all the hallmarks of a must-read book."--David Tall, coauthor of Algebraic Number Theory and Fermat's Last Theorem

"I strongly recommend this book. The discussions of mathematical ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox are excellent. In addition to mathematics, the book draws on other sciences, as well as philosophy, literature, and history. The historical discussions are particularly interesting and are woven into the mathematics."--Joseph Auslander, Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0691145997
• ISBN 13: 9780691145990
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 424