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    Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace

    4.1 8

    by Leonard Mlodinow

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    • ISBN-13: 9780684865249
    • Publisher: Free Press
    • Publication date: 04/02/2002
    • Edition description: Reprint
    • Pages: 320
    • Product dimensions: 5.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.90(d)

    Leonard Mlodinow, Ph.D., was a member of the faculty of the California Institute of Technology before moving to Hollywood to become a writer for numerous television shows ranging from Star Trek: The Next Generation to Night Court. He has also developed many bestselling and award-winning educational CD-ROMs, and delivered technical and general lectures in ten countries. He is currently Vice President, Emerging Technologies and R&D, at Scholastic Inc. He lives in New York City.

    Read an Excerpt

    Chapter One: The First Revolution

    Euclid was a man who possibly did not discover even one significant law of geometry. Yet he is the most famous geometer ever known and for good reason: for millennia it has been his window that people first look through when they view geometry. Here and now, he is our poster boy for the first great revolution in the concept of space — the birth of abstraction, and the idea of proof.

    The concept of space began, naturally enough, as a concept of place, our place, earth. It began with a development the Egyptians and Babylonians called "earth measurement." The Greek word for that is geometry, but the subjects are not at all alike. The Greeks were the first to realize that nature could be understood employing mathematics — that geometry could be applied to reveal, not merely to describe. Evolving geometry from simple descriptions of stone and sand, the Greeks extracted the ideals of point, line, and plane. Stripping away the window-dressing of matter, they uncovered a structure possessing a beauty civilization had never before seen. At the climax of this struggle to invent mathematics stands Euclid. The story of Euclid is a story of revolution. It is the story of the axiom, the theorem, the proof, the story of the birth of reason itself.

    Copyright © 2001 by Leonard Mlodinow

    Table of Contents

    Contents

    Introduction

    I THE STORY OF EUCLID

    1. The First Revolution

    2. The Geometry of Taxation

    3. Among the Seven Sages

    4. The Secret Society

    5. Euclid's Manifesto

    6. A Beautiful Woman, a Library, and the End of Civilization

    II THE STORY OF DESCARTES

    7. The Revolution in Place

    8. The Origin of Latitude and Longitude

    9. The Legacy of the Rotten Romans

    10. The Discreet Charm of the Graph

    11. A Soldier's Story

    12. Iced by the Snow Queen

    III THE STORY OF GAUSS

    13. The Curved Space Revolution

    14. The Trouble with Ptolemy

    15. A Napoleonic Hero

    16. The Fall of the Fifth Postulate

    17. Lost in Hyperbolic Space

    18. Some Insects Called the Human Race

    19. A Tale of Two Aliens

    20. After 2,000 Years, a Face-lift

    IV THE STORY OF EINSTEIN

    21. Revolution at the Speed of Light

    22. Relativity's Other Albert

    23. The Stuff of Space

    24. Probationary Technical Expert, Third Class

    25. A Relatively Euclidean Approach

    26. Einstein's Apple

    27. From Inspiration to Perspiration

    28. Blue Hair Triumphs

    V THE STORY OF WITTEN

    29. The Weird Revolution

    30. Ten Things I Hate About Your Theory

    31. The Necessary Uncertainty of Being

    32. Clash of the Titans

    33. A Message in a Kaluza-Klein Bottle

    34. The Birth of Strings

    35. Particles, Schmarticles!

    36. The Trouble with Strings

    37. The Theory Formerly Known As Strings

    Epilogue

    Notes

    Acknowledgments

    Index

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    Through Euclid's Window Leonard Mlodinow brilliantly and delightfully leads us on a journey through five revolutions in geometry, from the Greek concept of parallel lines to the latest notions of hyperspace. Here is an altogether new, refreshing, alternative history of math revealing how simple questions anyone might ask about space — in the living room or in some other galaxy — have been the hidden engine of the highest achievements in science and technology.
    Based on Mlodinow's extensive historical research; his studies alongside colleagues such as Richard Feynman and Kip Thorne; and interviews with leading physicists and mathematicians such as Murray Gell-Mann, Edward Witten, and Brian Greene, Euclid's Window is an extraordinary blend of rigorous, authoritative investigation and accessible, good-humored storytelling that makes a stunningly original argument asserting the primacy of geometry. For those who have looked through Euclid's Window, no space, no thing, and no time will ever be quite the same.

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    From the Publisher
    Curt Suplee The Washington Post High-spirited, splendidly lucid and often hilarious.

    Michael Guillen author of Five Equations That Changed the World How often can you say that a book on math — on math! — is a real page-turner? Well, this one is. As engaging as a soap opera, as fascinating as a whodunit, as funny as the Sunday comics, Mlodinow's book is storytelling at its best.

    Brian Greene author of The Elegant Universe There is perhaps no better way to prepare for the scientific breakthroughs of tomorrow than to learn the language of geometry, and Euclid's Window makes this task lively and enjoyable.

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