The Story Of Mathematics From The Book The Infinite

In 1912, the â€Å"unsinkable† ship Titanic ruptured its hull on a large iceberg, causing a completely unexpected disaster that shocked the world. Looking at this iceberg, or any other for that matter, the average observer likely draws the conclusion that what he sees is a good portion of the entire slab of frozen water. However, the observer only sees about 10 percent of its entirety: in order to view the whole iceberg, he must look below the surface to understand how such a seemingly â€Å"small† iceberg could sink a such a huge ship. And just as any observer should look deeper in order to understand the sinking of the Titanic, I did the same with mathematics when I read Taming the Infinite: The story of mathematics from the first numbers to chaos theory. Never before had I even considered the ideas discussed in the book written by Ian Stewart. What I found within ruptured a mental hull in brain, allowing the history of math to flow into my mind. Before reading the fi rst two chapters, I had always assumed that I had a fairly decent grasp of math; however, after completing the assignment I realized the vastness of its history which reaches into depths I’d never enter into otherwise. In my previous math classes, ranging from Algebra I to AP Calculus, I never had been assigned to anything dealing with the actual history of math. So, much to my surprise as stated earlier, I found many aspects of the book to be infinitely fascinating. In the first chapter, I was astonished to learnShow MoreRelated Reconciling Religious and Scientific Perspectives of Creation7359 Words   |  30 Pagesreader follows through the remainder of his cosmic creation story, the reader is intrigued at how mystical and religious the story sounds. â€Å"The space boiled, in the rapid expansion of the inflation era, blowing the universe apart with incredible rapidity in the much less than 10-30 seconds that it lasted. . . . 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