Do you ever think, 'only if I had a little more time...I could have done this in a better way or could have done something else too'. You look at a number of scientists and mathematicians and see that most didnt have all the time in their world to dedicate to research and science. Inspite of the constrains they had they have done some truly remarkable things. Achievements which are unparallaled. Well lets see a few of them:
1. Gregor Mendel, father of genetics who in the middle of 1800s spent 20% of his time researching on genetics and the rest 80% he had to spend time as a priest I guess, somewhere in Germany.
2. Gottfried Leibnitz, apart from being a philosopher and a mathematician was lawyer who spent lots of time with practical affairs of the state and politics.
3. Newton's greates discoveries and inventions came around, during the years when the Royal Society (RS) was hit by plague. The theory of colors, gravity and the foundations of the Principia's (the Principia itself, of coursecame later on) all happened amongst the wars the Enlish fought the Dutch with French and sometimes when they fought French teaming up with the Dutch.
4. Rene Descartes, who had signed up for the French military had to engage himself with numerous hopeless battles and inspite of that we know what he did to the field of math.
5. The list goes on...
and I guess I have to stop complaining and do my best in whatever little time I have :)
David Berlisnki's A Tour of Calculus is book, true to its name gives an overview of calculus.This is more than just a mere description. He explains how numbers and symbols came into being with the discvoeries and inventions of great mathematicians. He brings forth calculus with all its splendor, glory and beauty. You literally fall in love with Mathematics in general and calculus in particular. With those little titbits of ancient Hindu and Arab Mathematicians and the symbols which puzzled the scientists in 16th-18th century, you get yourself to think in a different way altogether.
I did study in calculus in 11th and 12th and a little bit more during the under-grad days and conveniently forgot after the exams for two reasons:
1. there was no motivation to really appreciate the subject
2. the subsequent subjects probably didnt need them computer science has more of discrete mathematics and therefore not much was emphasised on continuity and the likes during those 4 years
Now that theres a lot of math that I have to understand and deal with, I picked up this book
to serve me as a starting point to understand math :)
If someone needs to really appreciate the beauty of math and calculus, this is a must read.
9 comments:
chronological time -is- a hoax. one of the most pervasive ones. :)
You might also like reading "Einstein's Dreams" if you haven't already.
Hey kilocoder, good to see you
around :)
Will pick up that book sometime.
The books_to_read list never ends.
:)
the books_to_read list for this node (me) is almost empty now.
http://aalhadsaraf.blogspot.com/2008/02/why-i-lost-my-belief-in-words-and-how-i.html
http://aalhadsaraf.blogspot.com/2008/02/near-end-of-my-reading-habit.html
the reading bug seems to occur in cycles.
input mode. output mode. input mode....
When you get towards the end (because you will be very close to the limit of what words can model by then) - make sure you don't miss out on reading the Yoga Vasishtha - the non-linearity of time was discussed and studied in pre-historic India! :)
kilocoder,
very true. reading comes in cycles. some more reading now for me. I still have to complete Patanjali's
Yoga Sutras, which is one book I carry wherever I migrate to.
I owe you a lot for gifting me that book :)
Yoga Vashishta..hmmmm..looks like I have re-prioritize the books that I need to read. There are a bunch of other books on ancient and medieval Indian literature I bought from Sahitya Akademi back in India. Wish I could have got them all here.
you're welcome amigo :)
the yoga sutras are quite a seminal work.
Interestingly - it is near impossible to follow yamas and the niyamas (and not in the ordinary sense of merely 'difficult') given the kind of body we have for living out our lives. I'll post some interesting stuff on that some time soon.
Also, hey, have you read 'Snow Crash' ? I'd found that to be Stephenson's most interesting read!
'David Berlisnki's A Tour of Calculus' Is this book really good? Just as you said, my fundamentals of calculus are completely junked. I'm not a maths fanatic, but re-learning the true calculus would be fun. I would try this if it's so good.
hey shaolin :)
long time no see.
yes ... berlinski can make you fall in love with calculus again. He is no Thomas or Finney, but he -will- make you go back and take a closer look ;)
Hey Shaolin,
Yeah! This is a fun book. The intent is to appreciate this wonder called calculus. Berlinski treats the concepts, symbols and mathematicians as celebrities (rightly so) and makes you really appreciate how intuitive yet fascinating calculus is.
@kilocoder,
Will look forward for that post.
I haven't read Snowcrash. Quicksilver is my first book of his. Will probably pick that after I am done with the Baroque Cycle completely, which means it would be no earlier than next year :)
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