Number: The Language of Science

by Joseph Mazur and Tobias Dantzig

Book Overview

"Beyond doubt the most interesting book on the evolution of mathematics which has ever fallen into my hands."--Albert Einstein

Number is an eloquent, accessible tour de force that reveals how the concept of number evolved from prehistoric times through the twentieth century. Renowned professor of mathematics Tobias Dantzig shows that the development of math--from the invention of counting to the discovery of infinity--is a profoundly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452288118
• ISBN13: 9780452288119
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Review of the 4th revised edition (not the new 2007 edition)

I am a mathematics teacher and have used this book as either a required reading or suggested supplement for a variety of courses, including math history for liberal arts students, number theory for mathematics majors, etc. The book (4th edition) is divided into Part I and Part II -- the latter comprising only the last 4th of the book. Any successful college student will find Part I informative, and at times wonderfully enlightening about the development of the concepts of number and measurement. This book was written for the armchair reader, so expect a reader-friendly style of writing. However, I have found that Part II can be quite challenging for liberal arts students -- and quite stimulating to those whose studies included a more rigorous tour of mathematics. Do not let this bother you! I think Part I is worth the price of the book on its own. If you wish to learn more about the history of mathematics and mathematicians, you might wish to examine Notable Mathematicians: From Ancient Times to the Present edited by Robyn V. Young and Zoran Minderovic.

A Human Story

The striking facts about Danzig's book are : 1. It does not claim to be a 'popular' science book. At the outset, he warns the reader ".. it is not written for those who are afflicted with an incurable horror of the symbol". In doing so, I think he has gained more readership, simply because noone likes to be patronised, and most 'popular' science books are extremely patronising. 2. He makes it a point to explain to the reader that mathematics is not something that was made by the Hand of God. He clearly explains the mistakes made by some of the most eminent mathematicians, and thus brings out the 'human' element in the evolution of mathematics very beautifully. 3. He interweaves his philosophy with that of the history of math, and thus makes it eminently readable.

Postmodern mathematics?

Einstein called this "the most interesting book on the evolution of mathematics which has ever fallen into my hands." Number was first published in 1930 with the fourth edition coming out in 1954. This is a republication of that fourth edition (Dantzig died in 1956) edited by Joseph Mazur with a foreword by Barry Mazur. It is an eminently readable book like something from the pages of that fascinating four-volume work The World of Mathematics (1956) edited by James R. Newman in that it is aimed at mathematicians and the educated lay public alike. Part history, part mathematics and part philosophy, Number is the story of how we humans got from "one, two...many" to various levels of infinity. Strange to say it is also about reality. Here is Dantzig's concluding statement from page 341 in Appendix D: "...modern science differs from its classical predecessor: it has recognized the anthropomorphic origin and nature of human knowledge. Be it determinism or rationality, empiricism or the mathematical method, it has recognized that man is the measure of all things, and that there is no other measure." Or more pointedly from a couple of pages earlier: "Man's confident belief in the absolute validity of the two methods [mathematics and experiment] has been found to be of an anthropomorphic origin; both have been found to rest on articles of faith." These are inescapably the statements of a postmodernist. I was surprised to read them in a book on the theory of numbers, and even more surprised to realize that if mathematics is a distinctly human language, it is entirely possible that beings from distant worlds may speak an entirely different language; and therefore our attempts to use what many consider the "universal" language of mathematics to communicate with them may be in vain. And this thought makes me wonder. Is the concept "two," for example, (as opposed to the number "2") really just a human construction? Would not intelligent life anywhere be able to make a distinction, just as we have, between, say, two things and three things? And if so, would they not be able to count? And would not then the entire edifice of mathematics (or at least most of it) follow? I wonder if Dantzig was not in contradiction with himself on this point because earlier he writes (p. 252) "...any measuring device, however simple and natural it may appear to us, implies the whole apparatus of the arithmetic of real numbers: behind any scientific instrument there is the master-instrument, arithmetic, without which the special device can neither be used nor even conceived." Does this not imply that measurements (by any beings) and therefore numbers have an existence outside of the human mind and do not rest on "articles of faith"? As to the numbers themselves (putting philosophy aside) we learn that the two biggest bugaboos in the history of number are zero and infinity. It took a long, long time for humans, as Dantzig relates, to accept the idea of zero as a

A Master Work

I'm sending this book to my daughter, the doctor, who has expressed a desire to know something about the intellectual history of mathematics. I can't believe there is only one review! I have read this book three times; I may read it yet again before I die. Rather than list all its attributes, I suggest to the reader that s/he think of an attribute, and assume I gave I praise it to the limit of my ability!

Masterpiece Almost Forgotten

This is a book hardly read in our times of "modern math" (we are living in a museum of great innovations!) and that shows the theory of numbers as a human activity, stressing the fundamental role of the intuition in the construction of the mathematics. It seems to me that the gradual forgetfulness of this kind of book is one of the important causes for the continuous decline in the number of interested (and interesting!) people in the field of mathematics. I recommend this reading. You'll find a lot of fun!