Mundy's bookshelf: read en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 12:12:17 -0700 60 Mundy's bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Dynamics - The Geometry of Behavior]]> 31270263 643 Ralph H. Abraham Mundy 5 *Following my trend as of late to briefly capture the essence of charmingly old or neglected books*

Special thanks to my friend and fellow aesthete, Max Krieger, for directing my attention to this informative textbook + absolutely beautiful work of mathematical art! I mean, just check out these two entrancing pages for instance! ]]> 5.00 Dynamics - The Geometry of Behavior
author: Ralph H. Abraham
name: Mundy
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2021/06/17
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: art, continuous-math, dynamical-systems, highly-regarded, geometry, mathematics, physics, topology
review:
*Following my trend as of late to briefly capture the essence of charmingly old or neglected books*

Special thanks to my friend and fellow aesthete, Max Krieger, for directing my attention to this informative textbook + absolutely beautiful work of mathematical art! I mean, just check out these two entrancing pages for instance!
]]> <![CDATA[R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data]]> 33399049
Authors Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund guide you through the steps of importing, wrangling, exploring, and modeling your data and communicating the results. You'll get a complete, big-picture understanding of the data science cycle, along with basic tools you need to manage the details. Each section of the book is paired with exercises to help you practice what you've learned along the way.

You'll learn how

Wrangle—transform your datasets into a form convenient for analysisProgram—learn powerful R tools for solving data problems with greater clarity and easeExplore—examine your data, generate hypotheses, and quickly test themModel—provide a low-dimensional summary that captures true "signals" in your datasetCommunicate—learn R Markdown for integrating prose, code, and results]]> 521 Hadley Wickham 1491910356 Mundy 4 4.56 2016 R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data
author: Hadley Wickham
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2018/07/31
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: computer-science, data-science, interview-prep, machine-learning, statistics
review:

]]> Hilbert 1217018 272 Constance Bowman Reid 0387946748 Mundy 0 4.28 1970 Hilbert
author: Constance Bowman Reid
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: history, history-of-math, logic, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, philosophy, philosophy-of-sci, physics, set-theory, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Realism in Mathematics (Clarendon Paperbacks)]]> 812114 216 Penelope Maddy 019824035X Mundy 0 4.00 1990 Realism in Mathematics (Clarendon Paperbacks)
author: Penelope Maddy
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, constructivism, history-of-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, philosophy-of-physics, philosophy-of-sci
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics]]> 852046
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Feynman diagrams have revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics since the middle of the twentieth century. Introduced by the American physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) soon after World War II as a means of simplifying lengthy calculations in quantum electrodynamics, they soon gained adherents in many branches of the discipline. Yet as new physicists adopted the tiny line drawings, they also adapted the diagrams and introduced their own interpretations. Drawing Theories Apart traces how generations of young theorists learned to frame their research in terms of the diagrams—and how both the diagrams and their users were molded in the process.

Drawing on rich archival materials, interviews, and more than five hundred scientific articles from the period, Drawing Theories Apart uses the Feynman diagrams as a means to explore the development of American postwar physics. By focusing on the ways young physicists learned new calculational skills, David Kaiser frames his story around the crafting and stabilizing of the basic tools in the physicist's kit—thus offering the first book to follow the diagrams once they left Feynman's hands and entered the physics vernacular.]]> 376 David Kaiser 0226422674 Mundy 0 4.14 2005 Drawing Theories Apart: The Dispersion of Feynman Diagrams in Postwar Physics
author: David Kaiser
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history-of-math, history, mathematics, physics, social-sciences
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Saunders Mac Lane: A Mathematical Autobiography]]> 1570339 376 Saunders Mac Lane 1568811500 Mundy 0 3.78 2005 Saunders Mac Lane: A Mathematical Autobiography
author: Saunders Mac Lane
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, category-theory, history, history-of-math, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, references, set-theory, social-sciences
review:

]]> <![CDATA[King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry]]> 207949 399 Siobhan Roberts 0802714994 Mundy 0 3.80 2006 King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry
author: Siobhan Roberts
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, discrete-math, geometry, history-of-math, history, mathematics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Constructivism in Mathematics: An Introduction (Volume 121) (Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, Volume 121)]]> 2830895 Paperback. 376 Dirk van Dalen 0444705066 Mundy 0 4.50 1988 Constructivism in Mathematics: An Introduction (Volume 121) (Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, Volume 121)
author: Dirk van Dalen
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, constructivism, history-of-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, references, set-theory
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist: The Life of L. E. J. Brouwer: Volume 2: Hope and Disillusion: The Life of L.E.J. Brouwer]]> 6616751 946 Dirk van Dalen Mundy 0 0.0 Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist: The Life of L. E. J. Brouwer: Volume 2: Hope and Disillusion: The Life of L.E.J. Brouwer
author: Dirk van Dalen
name: Mundy
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, constructivism, history-of-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, philosophy-of-sci, set-theory
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist: The Life of L. E. J. BrouwerVolume 1: The Dawning Revolution]]> 1166032 a founder of modern topology and the creator of intuitionism, one of the most important schools of thought on the philosophy of mathematics. This biography discusses his fascinating life and provides a detailed analysis of his work.]]> 456 Dirk van Dalen 0198502974 Mundy 0 3.00 1999 Mystic, Geometer, and Intuitionist: The Life of L. E. J. BrouwerVolume 1: The Dawning Revolution
author: Dirk van Dalen
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, constructivism, history, history-of-math, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, references, set-theory
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity]]> 5786
From the Pythagoreans, the Greek cult of mathematics, to the mystical Jewish numerology found in the Kabbalah, The Mystery Of The Aleph follows the search for an answer that may never truly be trusted.]]> 258 Amir D. Aczel 0743422996 Mundy 0 3.90 2000 The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity
author: Amir D. Aczel
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, continuous-math, history-of-math, history, mathematics, theology
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Relevance of Charles Peirce (Monist Library of Philosophy)]]> 2032686 Book by 412 Eugene Freeman 0914417002 Mundy 0 4.00 1983 The Relevance of Charles Peirce (Monist Library of Philosophy)
author: Eugene Freeman
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history, history-of-math, linguistics, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, philosophy-of-sci
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists]]> 293991
In Out of their Minds, readers will hear the Newtons and Euclids of the computer age as they talk about their discoveries in information technology that have changed forever the way we live, work, and think about the world. Based on interviews by freelance writer Cathy Lazere and the expertise of computer scientist Dennis Shasha, Out of their Minds introduces readers to fifteen of the planet's foremost computer scientists, including eight winners of the Turing Award, computing's Nobel Prize. The scientists reveal themselves in fascinating anecdotes about their early inspirations and influences, their contributions to computer science, and their thoughts on its explosive future. These are the programmers whose work]]> 302 Dennis E. Shasha 0387982698 Mundy 0 3.85 1995 Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists
author: Dennis E. Shasha
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: algorithms, computer-science, history, re-shelved-for-later, to-read, history-of-math
review:

]]> Adventures of a Mathematician 423246
The autobiography of mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, one of the great scientific minds of the twentieth century, tells a story rich with amazingly prophetic speculations and peppered with lively anecdotes. As a member of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1944 on, Ulam helped to precipitate some of the most dramatic changes of the postwar world. He was among the first to use and advocate computers for scientific research, originated ideas for the nuclear propulsion of space vehicles, and made fundamental contributions to many of today's most challenging mathematical projects.

With his wide-ranging interests, Ulam never emphasized the importance of his contributions to the research that resulted in the hydrogen bomb. Now Daniel Hirsch and William Mathews reveal the true story of Ulam's pivotal role in the making of the "Super," in their historical introduction to this behind-the-scenes look at the minds and ideas that ushered in the nuclear age. An epilogue by Françoise Ulam and Jan Mycielski sheds new light on Ulam's character and mathematical originality.]]> 388 Stanislaw M. Ulam 0520071549 Mundy 5 4.11 1976 Adventures of a Mathematician
author: Stanislaw M. Ulam
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1976
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/03
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: history, mathematics, social-sciences, artificial-life, computer-science, discrete-math, favorites, highly-regarded, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Axiomatics: Mathematical Thought and High Modernism]]> 60557167
Why did abstraction dominate American art, social science, and natural science in the mid-twentieth century? Why, despite opposition, did abstraction and theoretical knowledge flourish across a diverse set of intellectual pursuits during the Cold War? In recovering the centrality of abstraction across a range of modernist projects in the United States, Alma Steingart brings mathematics back into the conversation about midcentury American intellectual thought. The expansion of mathematics in the aftermath of World War II, she demonstrates, was characterized by two opposing research in pure mathematics became increasingly abstract and rarified, while research in applied mathematics and mathematical applications grew in prominence as new fields like operations research and game theory brought mathematical knowledge to bear on more domains of knowledge. Both were predicated on the same abstractionist conception of mathematics and were rooted in the same modern axiomatics.

For American mathematicians, the humanities and the sciences did not compete with one another, but instead were two complementary sides of the same epistemological commitment. Steingart further reveals how this mathematical epistemology influenced the sciences and humanities, particularly the postwar social sciences. As mathematics changed, so did the meaning of mathematization.

Axiomatics focuses on American mathematicians during a transformative time, following a series of controversies among mathematicians about the nature of mathematics as a field of study and as a body of knowledge. The ensuing debates offer a window onto the postwar development of mathematics band Cold War epistemology writ large. As Steingart’s history ably demonstrates, mathematics is the social activity in which styles of truth—here, abstraction—become synonymous with ways of knowing.]]> 299 Alma Steingart 0226824209 Mundy 0 4.67 Axiomatics: Mathematical Thought and High Modernism
author: Alma Steingart
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, social-sciences, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Radical Approach to Real Analysis (AMS/MAA Textbooks, 10)]]> 64996339 339 David Bressoud 1470469049 Mundy 4 4.00 A Radical Approach to Real Analysis (AMS/MAA Textbooks, 10)
author: David Bressoud
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/14
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: continuous-math, history, mathematics, analysis, re-shelved-for-later, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Modern Algebra and the Rise of Mathematical Structures]]> 2302760 470 Leo Corry 3764370025 Mundy 0 4.11 1996 Modern Algebra and the Rise of Mathematical Structures
author: Leo Corry
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, abstract-algebra, discrete-math, history, mathematics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe]]> 12625589 Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s vision of a Universal Machine. Their work would break the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things—and our universe would never be the same.

Using five kilobytes of memory (the amount allocated to displaying the cursor on a computer desktop of today), they achieved unprecedented success in both weather prediction and nuclear weapons design, while tackling, in their spare time, problems ranging from the evolution of viruses to the evolution of stars.

Dyson’s account, both historic and prophetic, sheds important new light on how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II. The proliferation of both codes and machines was paralleled by two historic the decoding of self-replicating sequences in biology and the invention of the hydrogen bomb. It’s no coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at exactly the same time.

How did code take over the world? In retracing how Alan Turing’s one-dimensional model became John von Neumann’s two-dimensional implementation, Turing’s Cathedral offers a series of provocative suggestions as to where the digital universe, now fully three-dimensional, may be heading next.]]> 505 George Dyson Mundy 5 3.57 2012 Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe
author: George Dyson
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/12
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: artificial-life, computer-science, history, algorithms, game-theory, logic, mathematics, social-sciences, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 9: Computational Logic]]> 22255215
Logical calculi, which capture an important aspect of human thought, are now amenable to investigation with mathematical rigour and computational support and fertilized the early dreams of mechanised reasoning: Calculemus . The Dartmouth Conference in 1956 generally considered as the birthplace of artificial intelligence raised explicitly the hopes for the new possibilities that the advent of electronic computing machinery offered: logical statements could now be executed on a machine with all the far-reaching consequences that ultimately led to logic programming, deduction systems for mathematics and engineering, logical design and verification of computer software and hardware, deductive databases and software synthesis as well as logical techniques for analysis in the field of mechanical engineering. This volume covers some of the main subareas of computational logic and its applications.
Chapters by leading authorities in the fieldProvides a forum where philosophers and scientists interactComprehensive reference source on the history of logic"]]> 736 Dov M. Gabbay 0444516247 Mundy 0 5.00 2013 Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 9: Computational Logic
author: Dov M. Gabbay
name: Mundy
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, computer-science, constructivism, discrete-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, set-theory, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time]]> 13447543
Tim Maudlin's broad historical overview examines Aristotelian and Newtonian accounts of space and time, and traces how Galileo's conceptions of relativity and space-time led to Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Maudlin explains special relativity using a geometrical approach, emphasizing intrinsic space-time structure rather than coordinate systems or reference frames. He gives readers enough detail about special relativity to solve concrete physical problems while presenting general relativity in a more qualitative way, with an informative discussion of the geometrization of gravity, the bending of light, and black holes. Additional topics include the Twins Paradox, the physical aspects of the Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction, the constancy of the speed of light, time travel, the direction of time, and more.

Introduces nonphysicists to the philosophical foundations of space-time theory
Provides a broad historical overview, from Aristotle to Einstein
Explains special relativity geometrically, emphasizing the intrinsic structure of space-time
Covers the Twins Paradox, Galilean relativity, time travel, and more
Requires only basic algebra and no formal knowledge of physics

Tim Maudlin is professor of philosophy at New York University. His books include The Metaphysics within Physics and Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity.]]> 183 Tim Maudlin 0691143099 Mundy 0 4.12 2012 Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time
author: Tim Maudlin
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, geometry, history, mathematics, philosophy, physics, philosophy-of-physics, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics]]> 53730382
In this book, Joel David Hamkins offers an introduction to the philosophy of mathematics that is grounded in mathematics and motivated by mathematical inquiry and practice. He treats philosophical issues as they arise organically in mathematics, discussing such topics as platonism, realism, logicism, structuralism, formalism, infinity, and intuitionism in mathematical contexts. He organizes the book by mathematical themes--numbers, rigor, geometry, proof, computability, incompleteness, and set theory--that give rise again and again to philosophical considerations.]]> 352 Joel David Hamkins 0262542234 Mundy 0 4.41 Lectures on the Philosophy of Mathematics
author: Joel David Hamkins
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, geometry, computer-science, set-theory, abstract-algebra, category-theory, constructivism, continuous-math, discrete-math, history, number-theory, re-shelved-for-later, to-read, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Studies in Logic And The Foundations of Mathematics: Many-valued Logics]]> 59799046 124 J. B. Rosser Mundy 0 0.0 Studies in Logic And The Foundations of Mathematics: Many-valued Logics
author: J. B. Rosser
name: Mundy
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, computer-science, discrete-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, history-of-math
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]]> Logical Pluralism 1046476 J.C. Beall 0199288410 Mundy 0 3.62 2005 Logical Pluralism
author: J.C. Beall
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, computer-science, discrete-math, history, linguistics, logic, mathematics, philosophy, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[The Law of Non-Contradiction: New Philosophical Essays]]> 184035 Metaphysics. It is an assumption challenged from a variety of angles in this collection of original papers. Twenty-three of the world's leading experts investigate the "law," considering arguments for and against it and discussing methodological issues that arise whenever we question the legitimacy of logical principles. The result is a balanced inquiry into a venerable principle of logic, one that raises questions at the very center of logic itself.

The aim of this volume is to present a comprehensive debate about the Law of Non-Contradiction, from discussions as to how the law is to be understood, to reasons for accepting or re-thinking the law, and to issues that raise challenges to the law, such as the Liar Paradox, and a "dialetheic" resolution of that paradox. The editors contribute an introduction which surveys the issues and serves to frame the debate, and a useful bibliography offering a guide to further reading.

This volume will be of interest to anyone working on philosophical logic, and to anyone who has ever wondered about the status of logical laws and about how one might proceed to mount arguments for or against them.
]]> 443 Graham Priest 0199204195 Mundy 0 4.05 2004 The Law of Non-Contradiction: New Philosophical Essays
author: Graham Priest
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, discrete-math, logic, mathematics, linguistics, philosophy, history, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 8: The Many Valued and Nonmonotonic Turn in Logic]]> 3179395 690 Dov M. Gabbay 0444516239 Mundy 0 4.50 2007 Handbook of the History of Logic, Volume 8: The Many Valued and Nonmonotonic Turn in Logic
author: Dov M. Gabbay
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, computer-science, discrete-math, linguistics, logic, mathematics, philosophy, history, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[Lines of Thought: Branching Diagrams and the Medieval Mind]]> 51941565
These diagrams not only allow a glimpse into the thinking practices of the past but also constitute a chapter in the history of how people learned to rely on external devices—from stone to parchment to slide rules to smartphones—for recording, storing, and processing information. Beautifully illustrated throughout with previously unstudied and unedited diagrams, Lines of Thought is a historical overview of an important cognitive habit, providing a new window into the world of medieval scholars and their patterns of thinking.]]> 272 Ayelet Even-Ezra 022674308X Mundy 0 4.00 Lines of Thought: Branching Diagrams and the Medieval Mind
author: Ayelet Even-Ezra
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, cognitive-science, history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, social-sciences, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science]]> 55825328
Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the seventeenth-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it. He highlights how influential nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures developed a statistical methodology they claimed was purely objective in order to silence critics of their political agendas, including eugenics.

Clayton provides a clear account of the mathematics and logic of probability, conveying complex concepts accessibly for readers interested in the statistical methods that frame our understanding of the world. He contends that we need to take a Bayesian approach―that is, to incorporate prior knowledge when reasoning with incomplete information―in order to resolve the crisis. Ranging across math, philosophy, and culture, Bernoulli’s Fallacy explains why something has gone wrong with how we use data―and how to fix it.]]> 368 Aubrey Clayton 0231199945 Mundy 0 4.20 Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science
author: Aubrey Clayton
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, philosophy-of-sci, philosophy, statistics, social-sciences, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[Aristarchus of Samos: The Ancient Copernicus (Dover Books on Astronomy)]]> 1777459 "A most important contribution to the early history of Greek thought and a notable monument of English scholarship." � Journal of Hellenic Studies
This classic work traces Aristarchus of Samos's anticipation by two millennia of Copernicus's revolutionary theory of the orbital motion of the earth. Heath's history of astronomy ranges from Homer and Hesiod to Aristarchus and includes quotes from numerous thinkers, compilers, and scholasticists from Thales and Anaximander through Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Heraclides. 34 figures.]]> 448 Thomas Little Heath 0486438864 Mundy 0 3.80 1913 Aristarchus of Samos: The Ancient Copernicus (Dover Books on Astronomy)
author: Thomas Little Heath
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1913
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[A Manual of Greek Mathematics (Dover Books on Mathematics)]]> 1020884 ]]> 576 Thomas Little Heath 0486432319 Mundy 0 4.79 2003 A Manual of Greek Mathematics (Dover Books on Mathematics)
author: Thomas Little Heath
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.79
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, philosophy, history-of-math
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]]> Mathematics Observed 34311800 254 Hans Freudenthal Mundy 0 3.50 Mathematics Observed
author: Hans Freudenthal
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed]]> 208933
Pure mathematics, the area of Bourbaki’s work, seems on the surface to be an abstract field of human study with no direct connection with the real world. In reality, however, it is closely intertwined with the general culture that surrounds it. Major developments in mathematics have often followed important trends in popular culture; developments in mathematics have acted as harbingers of change in the surrounding human culture.

The seeds of change, the beginnings of the revolution that swept the Western world in the early decades of the twentieth century � both in mathematics and in other areas � were sown late in the previous century. This is the story both of Bourbaki and the world that created him in that time. It is the story of an elaborate intellectual joke � because Bourbaki, one of the foremost mathematicians of his day � never existed.]]> 272 Amir D. Aczel 1560259310 Mundy 0 3.33 2006 The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed
author: Amir D. Aczel
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle]]> 52579167 From the author of Wittgenstein's Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe's history

On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle--an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick--and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason.

The Vienna Circle's members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt Gödel. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The Circle championed the philosophy of logical empiricism, which held that only two types of propositions have cognitive meaning, those that can be verified through experience and those that are analytically true. For a time, it was the most fashionable movement in philosophy. Yet by the outbreak of World War II, Schlick's group had disbanded and almost all its members had fled. Edmonds reveals why the Austro-fascists and the Nazis saw their philosophy as such a threat.

The Murder of Professor Schlick paints an unforgettable portrait of the Vienna Circle and its members while weaving an enthralling narrative set against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and rising extremism in Hitler's Europe.]]> 313 David Edmonds 0691164908 Mundy 0 4.07 2020 The Murder of Professor Schlick: The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle
author: David Edmonds
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, philosophy, philosophy-of-sci, history, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Discovery of Dynamics: A Study from a Machian Point of View of the Discovery and the Structure of Dynamical Theories]]> 997475 Written by the world's leading expert on Mach's Principle, The Discovery of Dynamics is a highly original account of the development of notions about space, time, and motion. Widely praised in its hardback version, it is one of the fullest and most readable accounts of the astronomical studies that culminated in Kepler's laws of planetary motion and of the creation of dynamics by Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, and Newton. Originally published as Absolute or Relative Motion?, Vol. 1: The Discovery of Dynamics (Cambridge), The Discovery of Dynamics provides the technical background to Barbour's recently published The End of Time , in which he argues that time disappears from the description of the quantum universe.]]> 784 Julian Barbour 0195132025 Mundy 0 4.09 2001 The Discovery of Dynamics: A Study from a Machian Point of View of the Discovery and the Structure of Dynamical Theories
author: Julian Barbour
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, dynamical-systems, history, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, physics, references, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Block by Block: The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics]]> 49344893
This book offers an original perspective on thermodynamic science and history based on the three approaches of a practicing engineer, academician, and historian. The book synthesises and gathers into one accessible volume a strategic range of foundational topics involving the atomic theory, energy, entropy, and the laws of thermodynamics.
]]> 672 Robert T. Hanlon 0198851545 Mundy 0 4.61 Block by Block: The Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics
author: Robert T. Hanlon
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.61
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, chemistry, history, philosophy, physics, statmech-thermo-it, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mathematics of the Gods and the Algorithms of Men: A Cultural History]]> 53403844
In this elegant book, mathematician and philosopher Paolo Zellini offers a brief cultural and intellectual history of mathematics, ranging widely from the paradoxes of ancient Greece to the sacred altars of India, from Mesopotamian calculus to our own contemporary obsession with algorithms. Masterful and illuminating, The Mathematics of the Gods and the Algorithms of Men transforms our understanding of mathematical thinking, showing that it is inextricably linked with the philosophical and the religious as well as the mundane - and, indeed, with our own very human experience of the universe.]]> 256 Paolo Zellini 0141986484 Mundy 0 2.91 2016 The Mathematics of the Gods and the Algorithms of Men: A Cultural History
author: Paolo Zellini
name: Mundy
average rating: 2.91
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When Least Is Best: How Mathematicians Discovered Many Clever Ways to Make Things as Small (or as Large) as Possible (Princeton Science Library)]]> 56213243 A mathematical journey through the most fascinating problems of extremes and how to solve them



What is the best way to photograph a speeding bullet? How can lost hikers find their way out of a forest? Why does light move through glass in the least amount of time possible? When Least Is Best combines the mathematical history of extrema with contemporary examples to answer these intriguing questions and more. Paul Nahin shows how life often works at the extremes-with values becoming as small (or as large) as possible-and he considers how mathematicians over the centuries, including Descartes, Fermat, and Kepler, have grappled with these problems of minima and maxima. Throughout, Nahin examines entertaining conundrums, such as how to build the shortest bridge possible between two towns, how to vary speed during a race, and how to make the perfect basketball shot. Moving from medieval writings and modern calculus to the field of optimization, the engaging and witty explorations of When Least Is Best will delight math enthusiasts everywhere.]]> 406 Paul J. Nahin 0691218765 Mundy 0 5.00 2003 When Least Is Best: How Mathematicians Discovered Many Clever Ways to Make Things as Small (or as Large) as Possible (Princeton Science Library)
author: Paul J. Nahin
name: Mundy
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, continuous-math, history, mathematics, physics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons: From the Mathematics of Heat to the Development of the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable]]> 51801361 An entertaining mathematical exploration of the heat equation and its role in the triumphant development of the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable

Heat, like gravity, shapes nearly every aspect of our world and universe, from how milk dissolves in coffee to how molten planets cool. The heat equation, a cornerstone of modern physics, demystifies such processes, painting a mathematical picture of the way heat diffuses through matter. Presenting the mathematics and history behind the heat equation, Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons tells the remarkable story of how this foundational idea brought about one of the greatest technological advancements of the modern era.

Paul Nahin vividly recounts the heat equation's tremendous influence on society, showing how French mathematical physicist Joseph Fourier discovered, derived, and solved the equation in the early nineteenth century. Nahin then follows Scottish physicist William Thomson, whose further analysis of Fourier's explorations led to the pioneering trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. This feat of engineering reduced the time it took to send a message across the ocean from weeks to minutes. Readers also learn that Thomson used Fourier's solutions to calculate the age of the earth, and, in a bit of colorful lore, that writer Charles Dickens relied on the trans-Atlantic cable to save himself from a career-damaging scandal. The book's mathematical and scientific explorations can be easily understood by anyone with a basic knowledge of high school calculus and physics, and MATLAB code is included to aid readers who would like to solve the heat equation themselves.

A testament to the intricate links between mathematics and physics, Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons offers a fascinating glimpse into the relationship between a formative equation and one of the most important developments in the history of human communication.]]> 208 Paul J. Nahin 0691191727 Mundy 0 4.28 Hot Molecules, Cold Electrons: From the Mathematics of Heat to the Development of the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Cable
author: Paul J. Nahin
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.28
book published:
rating: 0
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shelves: history, mathematics, physics, statmech-thermo-it, continuous-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age]]> 14891844
Boolean algebra, also called Boolean logic, is at the heart of the electronic circuitry in everything we use―from our computers and cars, to home appliances. How did a system of mathematics established in the Victorian era become the basis for such incredible technological achievements a century later? In The Logician and the Engineer , Paul Nahin combines engaging problems and a colorful historical narrative to tell the remarkable story of how two men in different eras―mathematician and philosopher George Boole and electrical engineer and pioneering information theorist Claude Shannon―advanced Boolean logic and became founding fathers of the electronic communications age. Nahin takes readers from fundamental concepts to a deeper and more sophisticated understanding of modern digital machines, in order to explore computing and its possible limitations in the twenty-first century and beyond.]]> 248 Paul J. Nahin 0691151008 Mundy 0 3.46 2012 The Logician and the Engineer: How George Boole and Claude Shannon Created the Information Age
author: Paul J. Nahin
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, discrete-math, history, logic, mathematics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From Brouwer to Hilbert: The Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics in the 1920s]]> 207669 takes its start from the groundbreaking contributions of these major figures, a good, scholarly introduction to the area was not available until now. Unique and accessible, From Brouwer To Hilbert will serve as an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in the philosophy of mathematics, and will also be an invaluable resource for philosophers, mathematicians, and interested non-specialists.]]> 352 Paolo Mancosu 0195096320 Mundy 0 4.50 1997 From Brouwer to Hilbert: The Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics in the 1920s
author: Paolo Mancosu
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, discrete-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, set-theory, constructivism, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Adventure of Reason: Interplay Between Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Logic, 1900-1940]]> 10009603 the exact sciences.]]> 632 Paolo Mancosu 0199546533 Mundy 0 4.75 2010 The Adventure of Reason: Interplay Between Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Logic, 1900-1940
author: Paolo Mancosu
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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shelves: discrete-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, set-theory, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Combinators: A Centennial View]]> 58067942 370 Stephen Wolfram 1579550428 Mundy 0 3.75 2021 Combinators: A Centennial View
author: Stephen Wolfram
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, complexity-theory, computer-science, discrete-math, formal-grammars, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, physics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Age of Alternative Logics: Assessing Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics Today (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, 3)]]> 8034107 358 Johan van Benthem 9048124859 Mundy 0 4.50 2006 The Age of Alternative Logics: Assessing Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics Today (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, 3)
author: Johan van Benthem
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, history, logic, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, mathematics, discrete-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Three Volume Set]]> 36871635 1254 Ernst Cassirer 1138907251 Mundy 0 0.0 The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Three Volume Set
author: Ernst Cassirer
name: Mundy
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, cognitive-science, logic, history, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, philosophy-of-sci, social-sciences, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From a Geometrical Point of View (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, 14)]]> 6663884 320 Marquis 1402093837 Mundy 0 4.40 2008 From a Geometrical Point of View (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, 14)
author: Marquis
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, category-theory, discrete-math, geometry, logic, history, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, philosophy, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress (Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Science)]]> 3175205
In a discussion that brings together the history of science with the philosophy of science, Chang presents the simple eet challenging epistemic and technical questions about these instruments, and the complex web of abstract philosophical issues surrounding them. Chang's book shows that many items of knowledge that we take for granted now are in fact spectacular achievements, obtained only after a great deal of innovative thinking, painstaking experiments, bold conjectures, and controversy. Lurking behind these achievements are some very important philosophical questions about how and when people accept the authority of science.]]> 304 Hasok Chang 0195337387 Mundy 0 4.36 2004 Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress (Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Science)
author: Hasok Chang
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, chemistry, history, philosophy, philosophy-of-sci, physics, statmech-thermo-it, history-of-math
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]]> <![CDATA[After Godel: Platonism and Rationalism in Mathematics and Logic]]> 12963532 how constituted platonism addresses the problem of the objectivity of mathematics and of the knowledge of abstract mathematical objects. Finally, he considers the implications of this position for the claim that human minds ('monads') are machines, and discusses the issues of pragmatic holism and rationalism.]]> 245 Richard Tieszen 019960620X Mundy 0 4.33 2011 After Godel: Platonism and Rationalism in Mathematics and Logic
author: Richard Tieszen
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, computer-science, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Essays on Gödel's Reception of Leibniz, Husserl, and Brouwer]]> 26496456
The book is organised around Godel's use of Leibniz, Husserl and Brouwer. Far from considering past philosophers irrelevant to actual systematic concerns, Godel embraced the use of historical authors to frame his own philosophical perspective. The philosophies of Leibniz and Husserl define his project, while Brouwer's intuitionism is its principal foil: the close affinities between phenomenology and intuitionism set the bar for Godel's attempt to go far beyond intuitionism.

The four central essays are Monads and sets', On the philosophical development of Kurt Godel', Godel and intuitionism', and Construction and constitution in mathematics'. The first analyses and criticises Godel's attempt to justify, by an argument from analogy with the monadology, the reflection principle in set theory. It also provides further support for Godel's idea that the monadology needs to be reconstructed phenomenologically, by showing that the unsupplemented monadology is not able to found mathematics directly. The second studies Godel's reading of Husserl, its relation to Leibniz' monadology, and its influence on his publishe

d writings. The third discusses how on various occasions Brouwer's intuitionism actually inspired Godel's work, in particular the Dialectica Interpretation. The fourth addresses the question whether classical mathematics admits of the phenomenological foundation that Godel envisaged, and concludes that it does not.

The remaining essays provide further context. The essays collected here were written and published over the last decade. Notes have been added to record further thoughts, changes of mind, connections between the essays, and updates of references.









"]]> 342 Mark van Atten 3319100300 Mundy 0 4.40 2014 Essays on Gödel's Reception of Leibniz, Husserl, and Brouwer
author: Mark van Atten
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, computer-science, discrete-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, constructivism, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Hundred Years of Intuitionism (1907-2007): The Cerisy Conference (Publications des Archives Henri Poincaré Publications of the Henri Poincaré Archives)]]> 2846435 435 Mark van Atten 3764386525 Mundy 0 0.0 2008 One Hundred Years of Intuitionism (1907-2007): The Cerisy Conference (Publications des Archives Henri Poincaré Publications of the Henri Poincaré Archives)
author: Mark van Atten
name: Mundy
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, computer-science, discrete-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, philosophy, references, constructivism, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Constructivity and Computability in Historical and Philosophical Perspective (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, 34)]]> 22490851 225 Jacques Dubucs 940179216X Mundy 0 0.0 2014 Constructivity and Computability in Historical and Philosophical Perspective (Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, 34)
author: Jacques Dubucs
name: Mundy
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, computer-science, discrete-math, logic, history, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, constructivism, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gnomes in the Fog: The Reception of Brouwer’s Intuitionism in the 1920s (Science Networks. Historical Studies Book 28)]]> 40699691


The significance of foundational debate in mathematics that took place in the 1920s seems to have been recognized only in circles of mathematicians and philosophers. A period in the history of mathematics when mathematics and philosophy, usually so far away from each other, seemed to meet. The foundational debate is presented with all its brilliant contributions and its shortcomings, its new ideas and its misunderstandings.

]]> 630 Dennis E. Hesseling 303487989X Mundy 0 4.00 2003 Gnomes in the Fog: The Reception of Brouwer’s Intuitionism in the 1920s (Science Networks. Historical Studies Book 28)
author: Dennis E. Hesseling
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Patterns of Change: Linguistic Innovations in the Development of Classical Mathematics (Science Networks. Historical Studies, 36)]]> 6701988 280 Ladislav Kvasz 3764388390 Mundy 0 5.00 2008 Patterns of Change: Linguistic Innovations in the Development of Classical Mathematics (Science Networks. Historical Studies, 36)
author: Ladislav Kvasz
name: Mundy
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, history, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The World as a Mathematical Game: John von Neumann and Twentieth Century Science (Science Networks. Historical Studies, 38)]]> 6190831
"]]> 220 Giorgio Israel 3764398957 Mundy 0 3.47 2008 The World as a Mathematical Game: John von Neumann and Twentieth Century Science (Science Networks. Historical Studies, 38)
author: Giorgio Israel
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, physics, philosophy-of-math, philosophy-of-sci, philosophy, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A History of Mathematical Notations (Dover Books on Mathematics)]]> 1329662 820 Florian Cajori 0486677664 Mundy 0 4.05 1974 A History of Mathematical Notations (Dover Books on Mathematics)
author: Florian Cajori
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Physics and Necessity: Rationalist Pursuits from the Cartesian Past to the Quantum Present]]> 20723490 not purely rational, because only experience can tell us to which extent nature is comprehensible in a given way. Nor do they block the possibility of ever more varied forms of comprehensibility. They nonetheless suggest the inevitability of much of our theoretical physics.]]> 400 Olivier Darrigol 019871288X Mundy 0 4.00 2014 Physics and Necessity: Rationalist Pursuits from the Cartesian Past to the Quantum Present
author: Olivier Darrigol
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: artificial-life, chemistry, complexity-theory, discrete-math, history, logic, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, philosophy-of-sci, physics, statmech-thermo-it, references, to-read, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Worlds of Flow: A History of Hydrodynamics from the Bernoullis to Prandtl]]> 389128 370 Olivier Darrigol 0198568436 Mundy 0 4.00 2005 Worlds of Flow: A History of Hydrodynamics from the Bernoullis to Prandtl
author: Olivier Darrigol
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, complexity-theory, continuous-math, dynamical-systems, history, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-sci, physics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A History of Optics from Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century]]> 13689362 344 Olivier Darrigol 0199644373 Mundy 0 4.47 2012 A History of Optics from Greek Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century
author: Olivier Darrigol
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-sci, physics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Electrodynamics from Ampere to Einstein]]> 3366322 Thorough accounts are given of crucial episodes such as Faraday's redefinition of charge and current, the genesis of Maxwell's field equations, or Hertz' experiments on fast electric oscillations. Thus emerges a vivid picture of the intellectual and instrumental variety of nineteenth century physics. The most influential investigators worked at the crossroads between different disciplines and they did not separate theory from experiment, they frequently drew on competing traditions, and their scientific interests extended beyond physics into chemistry, mathematics, physiology, and other areas. By bringing out these important features, this book offers a tightly connected and yet sharply contrasted view of early electrodynamics.]]> 552 Olivier Darrigol 0198505930 Mundy 0 3.70 2000 Electrodynamics from Ampere to Einstein
author: Olivier Darrigol
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-sci, physics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference]]> 6926573 486 Judea Pearl 052189560X Mundy 5 4.17 2000 Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference
author: Judea Pearl
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2014/12/01
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: re-shelved-for-later, cognitive-science, computer-science, discrete-math, graph-theory, history, logic, machine-learning, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-sci, physics, references, social-sciences, statmech-thermo-it, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals]]> 558162 200 John Fauvel 0199298939 Mundy 0 3.90 2006 Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals
author: John Fauvel
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, art, cognitive-science, continuous-math, mathematics, music, history, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900]]> 416113
Stigler’s emphasis is upon how, when, and where the methods of probability theory were developed for measuring uncertainty in experimental and observational science, for reducing uncertainty, and as a conceptual framework for quantitative studies in the social sciences. He describes with care the scientific context in which the different methods evolved and identifies the problems (conceptual or mathematical) that retarded the growth of mathematical statistics and the conceptual developments that permitted major breakthroughs.

Statisticians, historians of science, and social and behavioral scientists will gain from this book a deeper understanding of the use of statistical methods and a better grasp of the promise and limitations of such techniques. The product of ten years of research, The History of Statistics will appeal to all who are interested in the humanistic study of science.]]> 428 Stephen M. Stigler 067440341X Mundy 4 4.15 1986 The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900
author: Stephen M. Stigler
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2016/07/01
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: history, mathematics, philosophy, statistics, philosophy-of-sci, history-of-math
review:

]]> A Mathematician's Apology 154060 153 G.H. Hardy 0521427061 Mundy 4 3.93 1940 A Mathematician's Apology
author: G.H. Hardy
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1940
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: history, mathematics, philosophy, social-sciences, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Elements of Intuitionism (Oxford Logic Guides)]]> 989657 344 Michael Dummett 0198505248 Mundy 0 3.80 1977 Elements of Intuitionism (Oxford Logic Guides)
author: Michael Dummett
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1977
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, cognitive-science, discrete-math, logic, history, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, references, constructivism, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway]]> 22529392 “A delightful meta-biography--playful indeed--of a brilliant iconoclast.� --James Gleick, author of The Information

John Horton Conway is a singular mathematician with a lovely loopy brain. He is Archimedes, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dali, and Richard Feynman all rolled into one--he boasts a rock star’s charisma, a slyly bent sense of humor, a polymath’s promiscuous curiosity, and an insatiable compulsion to explain everything about the world to everyone in it. At Cambridge, Conway wrestled with "Monstrous Moonshine," discovered the aptly named surreal numbers, and invented the cult classic Game of Life--more than just a cool fad, Life demonstrates how simplicity generates complexity and provides an analogy for mathematics and the entire universe. As a "mathemagician" at Princeton, he used ropes, dice, pennies, coat hangers, even the occasional Slinky, as props to extend his winning imagination and share his many nerdish delights. He granted Roberts full access to his idiosyncrasies and intellect both, though not without the occasional "Oh hell," he’d say. "You’re not going to put that in the book. Are you?!?"]]> 480 Siobhan Roberts 1620405938 Mundy 0 3.94 2015 Genius At Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway
author: Siobhan Roberts
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, history, mathematics, social-sciences, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Set Theory and its Philosophy: A Critical Introduction]]> 558192 360 Michael D. Potter 0199270414 Mundy 5 3.73 2004 Set Theory and its Philosophy: A Critical Introduction
author: Michael D. Potter
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/10
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: mathematics, philosophy, computer-science, history, logic, set-theory, discrete-math, philosophy-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science]]> 34848865 A dazzling group biography of the early twentieth-century thinkers who transformed the way the world thought about math and science
Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gödel and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science.

Exact Thinking in Demented Times tells the often outrageous, sometimes tragic, and never boring stories of the men who transformed scientific thought. A revealing work of history, this landmark book pays tribute to those who dared to reinvent knowledge from the ground up.
]]> 480 Karl Sigmund 0465096956 Mundy 5 4.13 2015 Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science
author: Karl Sigmund
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/08
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: cognitive-science, computer-science, highly-regarded, history, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, physics, social-sciences, logic, philosophy-of-math, philosophy-of-sci, set-theory, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine]]> 2333956 Programming Legend Charles Petzold unlocks the secrets of the extraordinary and prescient 1936 paper by Alan M. Turing

Mathematician Alan Turing invented an imaginary computer known as the Turing Machine; in an age before computers, he explored the concept of what it meant to be "computable," creating the field of computability theory in the process, a foundation of present-day computer programming.

The book expands Turing's original 36-page paper with additional background chapters and extensive annotations; the author elaborates on and clarifies many of Turing's statements, making the original difficult-to-read document accessible to present day programmers, computer science majors, math geeks, and others.

Interwoven into the narrative are the highlights of Turing's own life: his years at Cambridge and Princeton, his secret work in cryptanalysis during World War II, his involvement in seminal computer projects, his speculations about artificial intelligence, his arrest and prosecution for the crime of "gross indecency," and his early death by apparent suicide at the age of 41.]]> 372 Charles Petzold 0470229055 Mundy 5 4.27 2008 The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine
author: Charles Petzold
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2021/06/11
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: computer-science, highly-regarded, history, mathematics, philosophy, logic, discrete-math, philosophy-of-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Most Elegant Equation: Euler's Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics]]> 34219963
Bertrand Russell wrote that mathematics can exalt "as surely as poetry." This is especially true of one ei(pi) + 1 = 0, the brainchild of Leonhard Euler, the Mozart of mathematics. More than two centuries after Euler's death, it is still regarded as a conceptual diamond of unsurpassed beauty. Called Euler's identity or God's equation, it includes just five numbers but represents an astonishing revelation of hidden connections. It ties together everything from basic arithmetic to compound interest, the circumference of a circle, trigonometry, calculus, and even infinity. In David Stipp's hands, Euler's identity formula becomes a contemplative stroll through the glories of mathematics. The result is an ode to this magical field.]]> 240 David Stipp 0465093779 Mundy 3 3.80 A Most Elegant Equation: Euler's Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics
author: David Stipp
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2017/12/01
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: mathematics, history, continuous-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood]]> 8701960 Chaos and Genius, now brings us a work just as astonishing and masterly: a revelatory chronicle and meditation that shows how information has become the modern era's defining quality—the blood, the fuel, the vital principle of our world.

The story of information begins in a time profoundly unlike our own, when every thought and utterance vanishes as soon as it is born. From the invention of scripts and alphabets to the long-misunderstood talking drums of Africa, Gleick tells the story of information technologies that changed the very nature of human consciousness. He provides portraits of the key figures contributing to the inexorable development of our modern understanding of information: Charles Babbage, the idiosyncratic inventor of the first great mechanical computer; Ada Byron, the brilliant and doomed daughter of the poet, who became the first true programmer; pivotal figures like Samuel Morse and Alan Turing; and Claude Shannon, the creator of information theory itself.

And then the information age arrives. Citizens of this world become experts willy-nilly: aficionados of bits and bytes. And we sometimes feel we are drowning, swept by a deluge of signs and signals, news and images, blogs and tweets. The Information is the story of how we got here and where we are heading.]]> 527 James Gleick 0375423729 Mundy 4 4.02 2011 The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
author: James Gleick
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2012/02/01
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: mathematics, history, computer-science, statmech-thermo-it, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Enlightening Symbols: A Short History of Mathematical Notation and Its Hidden Powers]]> 18730612
While all of us regularly use basic math symbols such as those for plus, minus, and equals, few of us know that many of these symbols weren't available before the sixteenth century. What did mathematicians rely on for their work before then? And how did mathematical notations evolve into what we know today? In Enlightening Symbols , popular math writer Joseph Mazur explains the fascinating history behind the development of our mathematical notation system. He shows how symbols were used initially, how one symbol replaced another over time, and how written math was conveyed before and after symbols became widely adopted.

Traversing mathematical history and the foundations of numerals in different cultures, Mazur looks at how historians have disagreed over the origins of the numerical system for the past two centuries. He follows the transfigurations of algebra from a rhetorical style to a symbolic one, demonstrating that most algebra before the sixteenth century was written in prose or in verse employing the written names of numerals. Mazur also investigates the subconscious and psychological effects that mathematical symbols have had on mathematical thought, moods, meaning, communication, and comprehension. He considers how these symbols influence us (through similarity, association, identity, resemblance, and repeated imagery), how they lead to new ideas by subconscious associations, how they make connections between experience and the unknown, and how they contribute to the communication of basic mathematics.

From words to abbreviations to symbols, this book shows how math evolved to the familiar forms we use today.]]> 312 Joseph Mazur 0691154635 Mundy 4 3.53 2014 Enlightening Symbols: A Short History of Mathematical Notation and Its Hidden Powers
author: Joseph Mazur
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2019/03/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: cognitive-science, history, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy-of-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe]]> 40796176
Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down‑to‑earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number—infinity—to tackle real‑world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.

Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greec
e and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards� sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.

As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew.]]> 360 Steven H. Strogatz 1328879984 Mundy 4 4.27 2019 Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe
author: Steven H. Strogatz
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2019/04/01
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: history, mathematics, continuous-math, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid]]> 24113 777 Douglas R. Hofstadter 0465026567 Mundy 5 4.29 1979 Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1979
rating: 5
read at: 2010/06/01
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: highly-regarded, favorites, biology, cognitive-science, complexity-theory, computer-science, history, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, physics, social-sciences, logic, consciousness, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Knots: Mathematics with a Twist]]> 2882180 160 Alexei Sossinsky 0674009444 Mundy 3 Pros:
- Nice beginner knot theory book that is much heavier on the expository / dialogue side compared to the math-textbook-y side.

- Each chapter gives a relatively self-contained introduction to knot theory from a different perspective and historical/mathematical approach (my favorite was the braid theory section as this has inspired me to think about some potential ideas wrt rewriting systems and encoding "proofs as knots" (although this idea was not mentioned anywhere in the book)).

- The partition function connection to statistical physics models was rather fascinating! (although I wish it could have been explained much better)

Cons:
- The way the hardcover book was formatted could be improved. Many of the pictures were on pages whose explanations were on another page. This required constant flipping of the pages to see what the author was talking about. I suspect changing the size of the book could improve this aspect.

- Some chapters, especially in the latter half could have used more "meat" and explanatory dialogue to lead the reader through the mathematical steps. I had to do many rereads and external referencing to look up how the specific formalism / rules of that "knot invariant" worked.

- Many of the examples need to be worked out fully, without skipping steps. I would also like to have seen more worked-out examples in general.]]> 3.63 1999 Knots: Mathematics with a Twist
author: Alexei Sossinsky
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/26
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: discrete-math, continuous-math, geometry, graph-theory, knots, mathematics, physics, topology, history, history-of-math
review:
Pros:
- Nice beginner knot theory book that is much heavier on the expository / dialogue side compared to the math-textbook-y side.

- Each chapter gives a relatively self-contained introduction to knot theory from a different perspective and historical/mathematical approach (my favorite was the braid theory section as this has inspired me to think about some potential ideas wrt rewriting systems and encoding "proofs as knots" (although this idea was not mentioned anywhere in the book)).

- The partition function connection to statistical physics models was rather fascinating! (although I wish it could have been explained much better)

Cons:
- The way the hardcover book was formatted could be improved. Many of the pictures were on pages whose explanations were on another page. This required constant flipping of the pages to see what the author was talking about. I suspect changing the size of the book could improve this aspect.

- Some chapters, especially in the latter half could have used more "meat" and explanatory dialogue to lead the reader through the mathematical steps. I had to do many rereads and external referencing to look up how the specific formalism / rules of that "knot invariant" worked.

- Many of the examples need to be worked out fully, without skipping steps. I would also like to have seen more worked-out examples in general.
]]> <![CDATA[Einstein's Tutor: The Story of Emmy Noether and the Invention of Modern Physics]]> 204593605 The story of Emmy Noether, an intellectual giant who helped Einstein complete his General Theory of Relativity and made foundational contributions to science and mathematics. ĚýEmmy Noether is one of the most important figures in the history of science and mathematics.. Noether’s mathematical genius enabled Einstein to bring his General Theory of Relativity, the basis of our current theory of gravity, to fruition. On a larger scale, what came to be known as “Noether’s Theoremâ€� â€� called by a Nobel laureate “the single most profound result in all of physicsâ€� â€� supplied the basis for the most accurate theory in the history of physics, the Standard Model, which forms Ěýour modern theory of matter. Noether’s Theorem is also the tool physicists use to guide them towards the holy grail of a unified theory and is the secret weapon wielded by researchers at the cutting edge of fields as diverse as robotics, quantum computing, economics, and biology. Noether’s life story is equally important andĚý revelatory in understanding the pernicious nature of sexual prejudice in the sciences, revealingĚý the shocking discrimination against one of the true intellectual giants of the twentieth century, a woman effectively excluded from the institutions, perquisites, and fame given male counterparts in the world of science. Noether’s personality and optimistic, generous spirit, as Lee Phillips reveals, enabled her unique genius to persevere and arrive at insights that still astonish those who encounter them a century later.Ěý Ěý]]> 368 Lee Phillips 1541702956 Mundy 0 3.58 Einstein's Tutor: The Story of Emmy Noether and the Invention of Modern Physics
author: Lee Phillips
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.58
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: currently-reading, abstract-algebra, history, mathematics, physics, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The History of Mathematics: A Source-Based Approach (1) (AMS/MAA Textbooks, 45)]]> 42875552 488 June Barrow-Green 147044352X Mundy 5 4.67 The History of Mathematics: A Source-Based Approach (1) (AMS/MAA Textbooks, 45)
author: June Barrow-Green
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: currently-reading, discrete-math, geometry, history, mathematics, number-theory, social-sciences, references, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harmony of the World by Johannes Kepler: Memoirs, American Philosophical Society (vol. 209) (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society)]]> 821271 549 Johannes Kepler 0871692090 Mundy 5 4.07 1619 Harmony of the World by Johannes Kepler: Memoirs, American Philosophical Society (vol. 209) (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society)
author: Johannes Kepler
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1619
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: currently-reading, discrete-math, geometry, history, music, mathematics, philosophy, philosophy-of-math, philosophy-of-sci, physics, references, history-of-math
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Discrete Wavelet Transformations: An Elementary Approach with Applications]]> 2765979 564 Patrick Van Fleet 047018311X Mundy 4 4.33 2008 Discrete Wavelet Transformations: An Elementary Approach with Applications
author: Patrick Van Fleet
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: algorithms, computer-science, discrete-math, mathematics
review:

]]> Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell 14201
Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange.

Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrell. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms that between England and France. And their own obsessions and secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.]]> 1006 Susanna Clarke Mundy 4 fantasy, history 3.84 2004 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: fantasy, history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career]]> 44770129
Learn a new talent, stay relevant, reinvent yourself, and adapt to whatever the workplace throws your way. Ultralearning offers nine principles to master hard skills quickly. This is the essential guide to future-proof your career and maximize your competitive advantage through self-education.

In these tumultuous times of economic and technological change, staying ahead depends on continual self-education—a lifelong mastery of fresh ideas, subjects, and skills. If you want to accomplish more and stand apart from everyone else, you need to become an ultralearner.

The challenge of learning new skills is that you think you already know how best to learn, as you did as a student, so you rerun old routines and old ways of solving problems. To counter that, Ultralearning offers powerful strategies to break you out of those mental ruts and introduces new training methods to help you push through to higher levels of retention.

Scott H. Young incorporates the latest research about the most effective learning methods and the stories of other ultralearners like himself—among them Benjamin Franklin, chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, and Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman, as well as a host of others, such as little-known modern polymath Nigel Richards, who won the French World Scrabble Championship—without knowing French.

Young documents the methods he and others have used to acquire knowledge and shows that, far from being an obscure skill limited to aggressive autodidacts, ultralearning is a powerful tool anyone can use to improve their career, studies, and life.

Ultralearning explores this fascinating subculture, shares a proven framework for a successful ultralearning project, and offers insights into how you can organize and exe - cute a plan to learn anything deeply and quickly, without teachers or budget-busting tuition costs.

Whether the goal is to be fluent in a language (or ten languages), earn the equivalent of a college degree in a fraction of the time, or master multiple tools to build a product or business from the ground up, the principles in Ultralearning will guide you to success.]]> 305 Scott H. Young Mundy 3 mentat-training, psychology 3.94 2019 Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career
author: Scott H. Young
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: mentat-training, psychology
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance]]> 905
“Groundbreaking . . . the best guide to getting out of your own way . . . Its profound advice applies to many other parts of life.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes (“Five of My All-Time Favorite Books�)
Ěý
This phenomenally successful guide to mastering the game from the inside out has become a touchstone for hundreds of thousands of people. Billie Jean King has called the book her tennis bible; Al Gore has used it to focus his campaign staff; and Itzhak Perlman has recommended it to young violinists. Based on W. Timothy Gallwey’s profound realization that the key to success doesn’t lie in holding the racket just right, or positioning the feet perfectly, but rather in keeping the mind uncluttered, this transformative book gives you the tools to unlock the potential that you’ve possessed all along.
Ěý
“The Inner Game� is the one played within the mind of the player, against the hurdles of self-doubt, nervousness, and lapses in concentration. Gallwey shows us how to overcome these obstacles by trusting the intuitive wisdom of our bodies and achieving a state of “relaxed concentration.� With chapters devoted to trusting the self and changing habits, it is no surprise then, that Gallwey’s method has had an impact far beyond the confines of the tennis court.
Ěý
Whether you want to play music, write a novel, get ahead at work, or simply unwind after a stressful day, Gallwey shows you how to tap into your utmost potential. No matter your goals, The Inner Game of Tennis gives you the definitive framework for long-term success.]]> 134 W. Timothy Gallwey 0679778314 Mundy 5 4.15 1974 The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
author: W. Timothy Gallwey
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1974
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: cognitive-science, psychology, highly-regarded, mentat-training
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence]]> 857333 265 Josh Waitzkin 0743277457 Mundy 5 4.01 2007 The Art of Learning: A Journey in the Pursuit of Excellence
author: Josh Waitzkin
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: cognitive-science, favorites, highly-regarded, psychology, mentat-training
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything]]> 6346975 The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory

An instant bestseller that is poised to become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes." He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.]]> 307 Joshua Foer 159420229X Mundy 4 3.86 2011 Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
author: Joshua Foer
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/12/01
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: cognitive-science, psychology, mentat-training
review:

]]> <![CDATA["What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character]]> 35167718 Among the book's many tales we meet Feynman's first wife, Arlene, who taught him of love's irreducible mystery as she lay dying in a hospital bed while he worked nearby on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. We are also given a fascinating narrative of the investigation of the space shuttle Challenger's explosion in 1986, and we relive the moment when Feynman revealed the disaster's cause by an elegant experiment: dropping a ring of rubber into a glass of cold water and pulling it out, misshapen.]]> 288 Richard P. Feynman 0393355640 Mundy 4 autumn-leaf, history 4.10 1988 "What Do You Care What Other People Think?": Further Adventures of a Curious Character
author: Richard P. Feynman
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: autumn-leaf, history
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life]]> 61272278 An award-winning Oxford physicist draws on classic sci-fi, fantasy fiction, and everyday phenomena to explain and celebrate the magical properties of the world around us.

If you were to present the feats of modern science to someone from the past, those feats would surely be considered magic. Theoretical physicist Felix Flicker proves that they are indeed magic—just familiar magic. The name for this magic is “condensed matter physics.� Most people haven’t heard of the field, yet more than a third of physicists identify as condensed matter researchers, making it the most active area in the subject—with good reason. Condensed matter is the solids, liquids, and gasses that surround us—and the more exotic matters—which dictate every aspect of our present existence and hold the keys to a brighter future, from quantum computing to real-life invisibility cloaks.

Flicker teases out the magical threads that run through our daily lives. Condensed matter physics allows you to create anything abiding by the laws of reality—and often, we find that those laws can be bent. Flicker explains how to create new particles that never existed before, how to make crystals shoot out of such intense light they can cut through metal, how to separate the poles of a magnet, and more.

The book’s endearing conceit is that you are an aspiring wizard whose ability to cast spells (i.e. to do science) is dependent on your grasp of the fundamentals of our universe. This book contains no equations or charts—instead, it’s full of owls and mountains and infinite libraries, and staffs and wands, and martial arts and mythical islands ruled by sage knot-makers. Part of the book’s magic is that, for all these fanciful trappings, it still feels practical and applicable. The Magick of Physics will open your eyes to magic that surround us everyday.]]> 335 Felix Flicker 198217062X Mundy 0 3.84 The Magick of Physics: Uncovering the Fantastical Phenomena in Everyday Life
author: Felix Flicker
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: currently-reading, autumn-leaf, physics
review:

]]> Darkome 90122137
Before the bio-terror attack, Darkome was a place where DIY genetics enthusiasts could communicate in peace. After the attack, they were pushed deep underground by a brutal government response. The perpetrators are on Darkome, and the biohacker community is simply too dangerous to be allowed to exist.

Unfortunately, that community is the very thing David Adler needs. His daughter Inara is dying and, through Darkome, he might just be able to save her. The only problem is, the bioterrorists are still out there, and they are by no means finished.

David's quest to save his daughter may put him right in their path.]]> 256 Hannu Rajaniemi 1473203325 Mundy 0 3.79 2024 Darkome
author: Hannu Rajaniemi
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: currently-reading, biology, genetics, hard-sci-fi
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Combinatory Logic (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications)]]> 14995050 358 Katalin Bimbo 1439800006 Mundy 5 4.50 2011 Combinatory Logic (Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications)
author: Katalin Bimbo
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: computer-science, discrete-math, logic, mathematics, references
review:

]]> <![CDATA[To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles]]> 194769 256 Raymond M. Smullyan 0192801422 Mundy 5 4.20 1985 To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles
author: Raymond M. Smullyan
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read, computer-science, discrete-math, logic, mathematics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Living Proof: Stories of Resilience Along the Mathematical Journey]]> 52061501
“This book is a remarkable collection of personal reflections on what it means to be, and to become, a mathematician. Each story reveals a unique and refreshing understanding of the barriers erected by our cultural focus on “math is hard�. Indeed, mathematics is hard, and so are many other things - as Stephen Kennedy points out in his cogent introduction. This collection of essays offers inspiration to students of mathemtics and to mathematicians at every career stage.� —Jill Pipher, AMS President]]> 150 Allison K. Henrich 1470452812 Mundy 0 4.31 2019 Living Proof: Stories of Resilience Along the Mathematical Journey
author: Allison K. Henrich
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: mathematics, psychology, social-sciences, re-shelved-for-later, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation]]> 11797471 432 Jon Gertner 1594203288 Mundy 5 history, social-sciences 4.16 2012 The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
author: Jon Gertner
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: history, social-sciences
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Topology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)]]> 44403374
In this Very Short Introduction Richard Earl gives a sense of the more visual elements of topology (looking at surfaces) as well as covering the formal definition of continuity. Considering some of the eye-opening examples that led mathematicians to recognize a need for studying topology, he pays homage to the historical people, problems, and surprises that have propelled the growth of this field.

ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.]]> 176 Richard Earl 0198832680 Mundy 4 3.42 Topology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
author: Richard Earl
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.42
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: continuous-math, knots, graph-theory, mathematics, topology
review:

]]> Topology Illustrated 29457941 The book contains over 1000 color illustrations and over 1000 exercises.
Algebraic topology is the main subject of this book that initially follows a two-semester first course in topology. It furthermore takes the reader to more advanced parts of algebraic topology as well as some the shape of the universe, configuration spaces, digital image analysis, data analysis, social choice, exchange economy. An overview of discrete calculus is also included (extended presentation in Calculus Illustrated. Volume 1: Precalculus ). Ěý
CONTENTS]]> 657 Peter Saveliev 1495188752 Mundy 5 5.00 Topology Illustrated
author: Peter Saveliev
name: Mundy
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: re-shelved-for-later, set-theory, continuous-math, topology, mathematics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Introduction to Topology: Pure and Applied]]> 2812284 512 Colin Conrad Adams 0131848690 Mundy 5 4.21 2007 Introduction to Topology: Pure and Applied
author: Colin Conrad Adams
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: continuous-math, knots, mathematics, topology
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist): The Language Revolution That Made China Modern]]> 62927354
A New York Times Notable Book of 2022

What does it take to reinvent a language?

After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters , Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology.

Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today.

With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.]]> 336 Jing Tsu 0735214735 Mundy 5 4.20 2022 Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist): The Language Revolution That Made China Modern
author: Jing Tsu
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: history, linguistics, natural-languages, social-sciences, china
review:

]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist � an informational topologist with half his mind gone � as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Mundy 5 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2013/11/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: highly-regarded, favorites, biology, cognitive-science, complexity-theory, hard-sci-fi, linguistics, philosophy, physics, science-fiction, social-sciences
review:

]]> The Doors of Perception 3188964 The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.

The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953. The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'.

Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.]]> 208 Aldous Huxley Mundy 4 3.91 1956 The Doors of Perception
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: cognitive-science, biology, chemistry, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology
review:

]]> In Praise of Idleness 23587713 Disclaimer:
This e-book contains the single essay.]]> 12 Bertrand Russell Mundy 0 4.20 1935 In Praise of Idleness
author: Bertrand Russell
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/20
shelves: to-read, philosophy, social-sciences
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Too Big for a Single Mind: How the Greatest Generation of Physicists Uncovered the Quantum World]]> 60408777 The Age of Uncertainty, Tobias HĂĽrter brings to life the golden age of physics and its dazzling, flawed, and unforgettable heroes and heroines.

The work of the twentieth century’s most important physicists produced scientific breakthroughs that led to an entirely new view of physics—and a view of the universe that is still not fully understood today, even as evidence for its accuracy is all around us. The men and women who made these discoveries were intellectual adventurers, renegades, dandies, and nerds, some bound together by deep friendship; others, by bitter enmity. But the age of relativity theory and quantum mechanics was also the age of wars and revolutions. The discovery of radioactivity transformed science, but also led to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—reminding us of the entanglement of science and world events, for we cannot observe the world without changing it.]]> 368 Tobias Hürter 1615199209 Mundy 5 4.43 2021 Too Big for a Single Mind: How the Greatest Generation of Physicists Uncovered the Quantum World
author: Tobias HĂĽrter
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/10
date added: 2024/02/27
shelves: chemistry, history, physics, social-sciences
review:

]]> The Book of Elsewhere 202950650
There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.�

And he wants to be able to die.

In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.

A mind-blowing epic of ancient powers, modern war, and an outcast who cannot die. Combines Miéville’s singular style and creativity with Reeves’s haunting and soul-stirring narrative, unlike anything these two genre-bending pioneers have created before, inspired by the world of the BRZRKR comic books.]]> 352 Keanu Reeves 0593446593 Mundy 0 to-read 3.26 2024 The Book of Elsewhere
author: Keanu Reeves
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity]]> 61153739 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � A groundbreaking manifesto on living better and longer that challenges the conventional medical thinking on aging and reveals a new approach to preventing chronic disease and extending long-term health, from a visionary physician and leading longevity expert

Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.

For all its successes, mainstream medicine has failed to make much progress against the diseases of aging that kill most people: heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. Too often, it intervenes with treatments too late to help, prolonging lifespan at the expense of healthspan, or quality of life. Dr. Attia believes we must replace this outdated framework with a personalized, proactive strategy for longevity, one where we take action now, rather than waiting.

This is not “biohacking,� it’s science: a well-founded strategic and tactical approach to extending lifespan while also improving our physical, cognitive, and emotional health. Dr. Attia’s aim is less to tell you what to do and more to help you learn how to think about long-term health, in order to create the best plan for you as an individual. In Outlive, readers will discover:

� Why the cholesterol test at your annual physical doesn’t tell you enough about your actual risk of dying from a heart attack.
� That you may already suffer from an extremely common yet underdiagnosed liver condition that could be a precursor to the chronic diseases of aging.
� Why exercise is the most potent pro-longevity “drug”—and how to begin training for the “Centenarian Decathlon.�
� Why you should forget about diets, and focus instead on nutritional biochemistry, using technology and data to personalize your eating pattern.
� Why striving for physical health and longevity, but ignoring emotional health, could be the ultimate curse of all.

Aging and longevity are far more malleable than we think; our fate is not set in stone. With the right roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.]]> 496 Peter Attia 0593236599 Mundy 5
- Recommended to me by several friends due to my shared views w/ Attia and former pre-med background, but ignored due to me generally not liking 'self-help / tribal / rhetorical / fad' books. However, author proved rather rational and factual in the areas covered by this book (metabolic diseases, heart + cardiovascular diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, exercise, diet & nutrition, sleep, and emotional health). Was initially motivated to finally read this after hearing Peter Attia talk on Rich Roll's podcast and his mature perspective on his turbulent emotional past. Digested it entirely through audiobook form while taking morning walks in ~1 hr increments.

- While it reaffirmed my belief in several areas of health, well-being, and longevity, it also motivated me to adopt several behaviors and finally explore areas I have been putting off for years, such as converting my daily walks to rucking (starting with the 'Rogue Fitness: Rogue Plate Carrier' @ 20 lbs), putting more effort into gaining muscle mass via low impact exercise focused on minimizing long-term injury (rowing, swimming, and weight training), signing up for a Dexoscan to check for fat composition and potential deposits on organs despite outwardly slim appearance, purchasing a continuous glucose monitor to test how the foods I eat contribute to insulin spikes and attempt to minimize them, finally taking the literature of Rapamycin for aging seriously and seeking out a prescription, and prioritizing mindfulness and care for my emotional health.]]> 4.33 2023 Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity
author: Peter Attia
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/01/15
shelves: biology, chemistry, practical, psychology, social-sciences, medicine, highly-regarded
review:
Just some notes for myself:

- Recommended to me by several friends due to my shared views w/ Attia and former pre-med background, but ignored due to me generally not liking 'self-help / tribal / rhetorical / fad' books. However, author proved rather rational and factual in the areas covered by this book (metabolic diseases, heart + cardiovascular diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, exercise, diet & nutrition, sleep, and emotional health). Was initially motivated to finally read this after hearing Peter Attia talk on Rich Roll's podcast and his mature perspective on his turbulent emotional past. Digested it entirely through audiobook form while taking morning walks in ~1 hr increments.

- While it reaffirmed my belief in several areas of health, well-being, and longevity, it also motivated me to adopt several behaviors and finally explore areas I have been putting off for years, such as converting my daily walks to rucking (starting with the 'Rogue Fitness: Rogue Plate Carrier' @ 20 lbs), putting more effort into gaining muscle mass via low impact exercise focused on minimizing long-term injury (rowing, swimming, and weight training), signing up for a Dexoscan to check for fat composition and potential deposits on organs despite outwardly slim appearance, purchasing a continuous glucose monitor to test how the foods I eat contribute to insulin spikes and attempt to minimize them, finally taking the literature of Rapamycin for aging seriously and seeking out a prescription, and prioritizing mindfulness and care for my emotional health.
]]> <![CDATA[Artificial Chemistries (Mit Press)]]> 26532186 576 Wolfgang Banzhaf 026202943X Mundy 0 4.00 2015 Artificial Chemistries (Mit Press)
author: Wolfgang Banzhaf
name: Mundy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/12
shelves: artificial-life, biology, chemistry, complexity-theory, mathematics, physics, computer-science, references, formal-grammars, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy]]> 236997 331 John DeFrancis 0824810686 Mundy 0 3.79 1984 The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy
author: John DeFrancis
name: Mundy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/12
shelves: to-read, china, history, linguistics, social-sciences
review:

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