my eyes vs. infinity

I've been reading about math.

previously I've mentioned how difficult it can be to talk about a given book with people who haven't read it. I think it's different with non-fiction. it's far less subjective, and so what there is to be said about it is more easily said.

it's rare you'll find me in the non-fiction section without some specific project in mind, without precisely scribbled coordinates on a scrap of paper in my hand, but this time, so it happened. I was waiting for the printer, wandering in that maze of Dewey decimals, sans purpose, sans map. I came away with Ian Stewart's Why Beauty is Truth. it has a pretty blue butterfly on the cover.

to my little sister who is studying physics, I say: read this book. you will probably recognize more than I did all the fancy theories and theorists dancing through it.

what else do I have to say? I am full of flimsy little dreams of what it would be like to be a mathematician. between this lovely book, all the Seed magazine articles I've been chewing on thismorning, reruns of Numb3rs, and half a dozen other semi-enlightening distractions, I wonder if I'll ever be able to focus on writing. writing is what I really really most want to do, right? hmm.

it's all about symmetry. balance. transformation and consistency and logical patterns. a lot of crazy math had to be concocted before we could get to where we understood so much about the universe. Stewart ties up his review of mathematical history with the observation that even seemingly pointless excursions into the realms of theoretical science, when looked at again and again from varying perspectives, may yield wonderful possibilities for discovering more and more about the world we live in. it's the counterpoint between the loftiness of theory and the weightiness of practicality. it's all those gaps...

and reading so many stories of often under-appreciated brilliance makes me feel much better about my own seemingly pointless wonderings about the way things are. you never know where such questions will take you. even if nobody (including yourself) thinks your idea is very cool, in another hundred years it might turn out to be.

I should probably spend more time among those non-fiction shelves.

{incidentally--and it took the author's most blatant of hints (on page 176, when he mentions his friend Terry Pratchett) before I realized this--Ian Stewart co-authored The Science of Discworld, which I uncharacteristically spent my last scrap of British money on, at a bookshop in the Gatwick international airport. why don't airports have libraries in them? }