Book description
This book tackles the important questions which have engaged mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers for thousands of years and which are still being asked today. It does so with clarity and with scholarship born of first-hand experience; a knowledge both of the ideas and of the people who have pronounced on…
Why read it?
1 author picked What Is Mathematics, Really? as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Reuben Hersh is responsible for a revolution in the way we look at mathematics. His main idea is very simple: mathematics is something that is created by human beings. Isn’t that obvious, you say? Not if you believe that mathematics is there even before life itself, that it is built into the nature of reality in some way. In philosophy, this view is called Platonism. Hersh had the radical but obvious idea that if we want to understand what mathematics is we should look at what mathematicians actually do when they create mathematics. Like all great ideas it can be…
From William's list on thinking, creativity, and mathematics.
If you love What Is Mathematics, Really?...
Fighting The Virus
Many of the words used to describe disease ('infection', 'transmission', 'virus') are also used to characterize cyber security (for example: a computer is infected by a virus that can be transmitted to other currently uninfected computers). Using models from the population biology of disease shows this correspondence much deeper than…
Want books like What Is Mathematics, Really??
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like What Is Mathematics, Really?.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,276
readers submitted
so far, will you?
