Math for Mystics

Author: Renna Shesso
Publisher: Weiser Books
ISBN: 1609252748
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
Much of math history comes to us from early astrologers who needed to be able to describe and record what they saw in the night sky. Whether you were the king’s court astrologer or a farmer marking the best time for planting, timekeeping and numbers really mattered. Mistake a numerical pattern of petals and you could be poisoned. Lose the rhythm of a sacred dance or the meter of a ritually told story and the intricately woven threads that hold life together were spoiled. Ignore the celestial clock of equinoxes and solstices, and you’d risk being caught short of food for the winter. Shesso’s friendly tone and clear grasp of the information make the math “go down easy” in this marvelous book.

Naming Infinity

Author: Loren Graham
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674032934
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
In 1913, Russian imperial marines stormed an Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece, to haul off monks engaged in a dangerously heretical practice known as Name Worshipping. Exiled to remote Russian outposts, the monks and their mystical movement went underground. Ultimately, they came across Russian intellectuals who embraced Name Worshipping—and who would achieve one of the biggest mathematical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, going beyond recent French achievements. Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor take us on an exciting mathematical mystery tour as they unravel a bizarre tale of political struggles, psychological crises, sexual complexities, and ethical dilemmas. At the core of this book is the contest between French and Russian mathematicians who sought new answers to one of the oldest puzzles in math: the nature of infinity. The French school chased rationalist solutions. The Russian mathematicians, notably Dmitri Egorov and Nikolai Luzin—who founded the famous Moscow School of Mathematics—were inspired by mystical insights attained during Name Worshipping. Their religious practice appears to have opened to them visions into the infinite—and led to the founding of descriptive set theory. The men and women of the leading French and Russian mathematical schools are central characters in this absorbing tale that could not be told until now. Naming Infinity is a poignant human interest story that raises provocative questions about science and religion, intuition and creativity.

The Mystery of the Aleph

Author: Amir D. Aczel
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743422996
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
A compelling narrative that blends the story of infinity with the tragic tale of a tormented and brilliant mathematician.

Enthusiastic Mathematics

Author: Bernie Lewin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781982930523
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
Fifty years ago, a small sparse book came out under the pretentious title Laws of Form. Its author might have once fallen in with the logical philosophers of Cambridge, including Russell and Wittgenstein. But only later, while designing primitive switching circuits for British Rail, did George Spencer Brown come upon the arithmetic underlying Boolean algebra. Laws of Form flips the reduction of mathematics to logic, revealing simple laws of being and knowing that only reflect what great mystics, East and West, have been saying all along. Enthusiastic Mathematics offers the first thorough, philosophical introduction to Laws of Form. With no presumption for logic or mathematics, the reader is delivered into its philosophical vision via a colourful journey through the history of science.

Shape

Author: Jordan Ellenberg
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984879065
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
An instant New York Times Bestseller! “Unreasonably entertaining . . . reveals how geometric thinking can allow for everything from fairer American elections to better pandemic planning.” —The New York Times From the New York Times-bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong—himself a world-class geometer—a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything. How should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? How do computers learn to play Go, and why is learning Go so much easier for them than learning to read a sentence? Can ancient Greek proportions predict the stock market? (Sorry, no.) What should your kids learn in school if they really want to learn to think? All these are questions about geometry. For real. If you're like most people, geometry is a sterile and dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade, along with your braces and active romantic interest in pop singers. If you recall any of it, it's plodding through a series of miniscule steps only to prove some fact about triangles that was obvious to you in the first place. That's not geometry. Okay, it is geometry, but only a tiny part, which has as much to do with geometry in all its flush modern richness as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel. Shape reveals the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face. Geometry asks: Where are things? Which things are near each other? How can you get from one thing to another thing? Those are important questions. The word "geometry"comes from the Greek for "measuring the world." If anything, that's an undersell. Geometry doesn't just measure the world—it explains it. Shape shows us how.

The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic & Mysticism

Author: Geoffrey W. Dennis
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN: 0738748145
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 561

Book Description
Jewish esotericism is the oldest and most influential continuous occult tradition in the West. Presenting lore that can spiritually enrich your life, this one-of-a-kind encyclopedia is devoted to the esoteric in Judaism—the miraculous and the mysterious. In this second edition, Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis has added over thirty new entries and significantly expanded over one hundred other entries, incorporating more knowledge and passages from primary sources. This comprehensive treasury of Jewish teachings, drawn from sources spanning Jewish scripture, the Talmud, the Midrash, the Kabbalah, and other esoteric branches of Judaism, is exhaustively researched yet easy to use. It includes over one thousand alphabetical entries, from Aaron to Zohar Chadesh, with extensive cross-references to related topics and new illustrations throughout. Drawn from the well of a great spiritual tradition, the secret wisdom within these pages will enlighten and empower you. Praise: "An erudite and lively compendium of Jewish magical beliefs, practices, texts, and individuals...This superb, comprehensive encyclopedia belongs in every serious library."—Richard M. Golden, Director of the Jewish Studies Program, University of North Texas, and editor of The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition "Rabbi Dennis has performed a tremendously important service for both the scholar and the novice in composing a work of concise information about aspects of Judaism unbeknownst to most, and intriguing to all."—Rabbi Gershon Winkler, author of Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism

The Demon and the Quantum

Author: Robert J. Scully
Publisher: Wiley-VCH
ISBN: 9783527409839
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
Eagerly awaited, the new edition of this successful text is now available in paperback. Maxwell's Demon is a character in an 1867 thought experiment by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, meant to raise questions about the second law of thermodynamics. This book explains the connection between Maxwell's Demon and the role of the observer and quantum eraser, showing that information science, thermodynamics and quantum physics are closely related. We often hear phrases like quantum weirdness and the strange world of the quantum. A fact that is not so widely appreciated is that quantum mechanics can (and does) shed light on problems such as the Maxwell Demon Paradox of thermodynamics, the seemingly spiritual nature of information, and even, perhaps, new insights into the existence of Mind! The common denominator of all this is the fact that information is a real physical quantity. Information is more than something just in our mind; it is the essence of, and in many ways more general than the concept of entropy. By focusing on entropy, information, and observation, the authors bring a unique perspective to this subject, and offer insight into the strange ways of the quantum which will not only fascinate scientists but lay persons as well. Key features of the new paperback edition: Explains the connection between Maxwell's Demon and the role of the observer Takes a completely new approach to quantum mechanics and quantum information theory which is of interest to students from undergraduate level onwards as well as researchers and lay persons Written by two authors who approach the topic from two different angles and combine both the scholar's and the layperson's perspective in a most interesting and enjoyable fashion Treats central concepts such as entropy, information and intelligence in a comprehensible and entertaining way Includes fresh biographical material on key researchers like Planck, Schrödinger, and others is presented at the beginning of each chapter Mathematical formulae have been removed and replaced by a history of famous Erwin Schrödinger Praise for the previous edition: "The Demon and the Quantum is accessible to a large spectrum of readers of PHYSICS TODAY; it is worthwhile reading?" Physics Today

Men of Mathematics

Author: E.T. Bell
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476784256
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Book Description
From one of the greatest minds in contemporary mathematics, Professor E.T. Bell, comes a witty, accessible, and fascinating look at the beautiful craft and enthralling history of mathematics. Men of Mathematics provides a rich account of major mathematical milestones, from the geometry of the Greeks through Newton’s calculus, and on to the laws of probability, symbolic logic, and the fourth dimension. Bell breaks down this majestic history of ideas into a series of engrossing biographies of the great mathematicians who made progress possible—and who also led intriguing, complicated, and often surprisingly entertaining lives. Never pedantic or dense, Bell writes with clarity and simplicity to distill great mathematical concepts into their most understandable forms for the curious everyday reader. Anyone with an interest in math may learn from these rich lessons, an advanced degree or extensive research is never necessary.

Secrets in the Fields

Author: Freddy Silva
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing Company
ISBN: 9781571743220
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Secrets in the Fields is the most thoroughly researched, most comprehensive book on the market about crop circles phenomena. The author takes readers on an exhilarating firsthand field trip into the heart of this mystery. He introduces us to farmers, researchers, scientists, mystics, hoaxers, and debunkers. He tells: How to distinguish a hoax from an authentic crop circle. The role of UFOs/aliens in the creation of crop circles.>br>What crop circles might mean. How a theory of music may account for their creation. This is a book for anyone interested in the unexplained, earth mysteries, UFOs, and esoteric wisdom. It will be a hit with those who love books about the pyramids, 2012 prophecies, and the Gnostic mysteries.

Is God a Mathematician?

Author: Mario Livio
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416594434
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Bestselling author and astrophysicist Mario Livio examines the lives and theories of history’s greatest mathematicians to ask how—if mathematics is an abstract construction of the human mind—it can so perfectly explain the physical world. Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once wondered about “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” in the formulation of the laws of nature. Is God a Mathematician? investigates why mathematics is as powerful as it is. From ancient times to the present, scientists and philosophers have marveled at how such a seemingly abstract discipline could so perfectly explain the natural world. More than that—mathematics has often made predictions, for example, about subatomic particles or cosmic phenomena that were unknown at the time, but later were proven to be true. Is mathematics ultimately invented or discovered? If, as Einstein insisted, mathematics is “a product of human thought that is independent of experience,” how can it so accurately describe and even predict the world around us? Physicist and author Mario Livio brilliantly explores mathematical ideas from Pythagoras to the present day as he shows us how intriguing questions and ingenious answers have led to ever deeper insights into our world. This fascinating book will interest anyone curious about the human mind, the scientific world, and the relationship between them.