Timeline for Favorite popular math book
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 9, 2012 at 14:47 | comment | added | Todd Trimble | My mother, who is intelligent and very well-read but not comfortable with mathematics, found the book hard-going. | |
| Jun 14, 2012 at 15:51 | comment | added | Feldmann Denis | V'Arnold would be very angry at calling "confusion of abstract groups with (faithful) matrix representations" a subtle mistake. If Euler could have understood the question, he would probably laugh a lot too. I wonder if those "subtle philosophical gaps" are similarly deep enough to destroy the conclusions of the book... | |
| Dec 10, 2010 at 18:21 | comment | added | Simon Rose | Math or no math, it's a fun and playful book to read. | |
| Dec 9, 2010 at 8:54 | comment | added | Ketil Tveiten | It's lovely, but many people complain about the formal logic stuff, which gets pretty heavy at times. Even mathematically inclined people. (Not me though, I've read it three times at least!) | |
| Dec 4, 2010 at 19:29 | comment | added | Jim Conant | Some chapters are better than others. I couldn't really get into the DNA typography stuff, but I loved a lot of other sections of the book. | |
| Feb 24, 2010 at 22:22 | comment | added | Dan Piponi | I agree with @Woo that there are suspect philosophical arguments in GEB. Hofstadter would probably say that these arguments are more important than the mathematics. And yet I would still recommend GEB for the mathematics it contains. | |
| Dec 14, 2009 at 0:59 | comment | added | B. Bischof | @Woo Is there perhaps discussion somewhere on these issues that you could point me too. I am about a third of the way through and would like to hear some of these arguments, since I am as you say a "layman to philosophy". Thanks in advance. :) | |
| Dec 13, 2009 at 6:49 | comment | added | David Lehavi | Indeed a very nice book. However, although I know many people who read it, I don't know a single one who doesn't have a degree in math (non of them had when they read it). Is your aunt up to it ? | |
| Dec 12, 2009 at 3:57 | comment | added | Qiaochu Yuan | Admittedly I'm no expert on philosophy. I just think GEB has a lot of interesting ideas in it, and Hofstadter presents them very artfully. | |
| Dec 12, 2009 at 2:24 | comment | added | Alexander Woo | I must be one of the few people who disrecommend the book. He draws some philosophical conclusions using arguments which have subtle philosophical gaps which are hard for a layman (to philosophy) reader to spot, and gives no hint there could be controversy. It is a legitimate argument that the gaps I mentioned are not actually gaps at all, but also a legitimate argument that they are. (Mathematical analogy for the kind of subtle error: confusing an abstract group with one of its faithful matrix representations.) | |
| Dec 11, 2009 at 22:56 | comment | added | Dan Piponi | I think Hofstadter would himself say that it is not about mathematics. And I'd say that he was wrong. | |
| Dec 11, 2009 at 22:32 | history | answered | Qiaochu Yuan | CC BY-SA 2.5 |