No comments about A Survey of Mathematics: Elementary Concepts and Their Historical Development.

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2 comments about The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet: Beyond Phi.

1. Though a dense and academic-oriented work, Professor Edward Condren's The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet also opens a lay window into the medieval mind as important and accessible as Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. This may not have been the Professor's intent, to appeal to a non-academic audience, but the book's conclusions are immensely appealing and compelling. The author strips away 600 years of modern thought and filters, and in the process manifests the fourteenth century intellectual and spiritual mind.

   Together, the four poems in the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript are a literary, pre-decimal attempt at using irrational numbers, arithmetic and harmonic ratios, and their link to infinity to describe The Infinite. The Indescribable can have metaphors via mathematics and the rest of the quadrivium that effect God's true values and instruction for man.

   Professor Condren layers direct observation, a history of academic criticism, as well as directly leaning upon Plato, Augustine, and Boethius to fix the primacy of math in the medieval philosophical consciousness. Mathematics was seen "to bridge the worlds of flesh and spirit." (p. 3) This should not be a stretch when we reconsider the "belief" in alchemy.

   Professor Condren has to ride multiple analytic horses to build his case. He combines Phi expansions implying infinite growth, concentric rings implying spiritual growth, to iconoclastic textural analysis to build his argument and coordinate disparate disciplines well enough to convince readers who may only have knowledge in one of the disciplines that he relies upon.

   The Pearl Poet uses the medieval quadrivium as Umberto Eco uses semiotics and James Joyce used Shakespeare. By grounding his four poems in the quadrivium, the poet makes use of a known system for better explicating his world. Just as readers should not attempt Joyce's Ulysses without the New Bloomsday Book, one should not begin any of the poems of the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript without The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet.




2. If you enjoyed The DaVinci Code, you will surely be fascinated by this book, which demonstrates that the Gawain-Pearl poet "encoded" mathematics, music, architecture and more within the expertly crafted pages of his manuscript.

   One need not be a medievalist to find this book compelling. Mathematicians will enjoy this book's demonstration that mathematics and language can work together toward a poet's goal. Yet one need not be a mathematician to appreciate the Gawain-Pearl poet's stunning artistic triumph, which this book so masterfully illustrates.

   If you enjoy finding "codes" and patterns and symmetries in literature, which not only challenge the reader but also enrich the meaning and enjoyment of the text, you will surely appreciate this book. Professor Condren has unlocked the rich mysteries of a little-known medieval manuscript with this thought-provoking book, which may even change the way you look at literature.

No comments about Peoples of the World.

2 comments about Mathematical Puzzles.

1. If you really like tough puzzles, that is the book and the writer that you were looking for. In one book there is enough puzzles for a human being life.

   The puzzle categories are also quite wide from tangram to chess problems.




2. A good puzzle is much like a classic novel. You read it and then after a certain period of time, you can read it again and enjoy it just as much as the first time. These puzzles of Sam Loyd, which were published over a century ago, stretch the brain cells as much now as they did when they dazzled the people of a younger country.
   The problems follow very standard themes. Having read many puzzle books, I recognized the form of all of the puzzles in this one. However, they are so well stated that reading them is a significant part of the fun. It is also an interesting piece of historical perspective that puzzles were also a very popular staple in newspapers over a century ago. Reading the puzzles and looking at the diagrams also takes you back to a different age. Some of the caricatures of the figures could not be used in the politically correct atmosphere of today. It also seems most unlikely that a problem involving nuns being abducted by soldiers would be published in a modern newspaper. Therefore, it is necessary to cut a little historical slack when you read the book.
   Sam Loyd was the best puzzlist that America has ever had. The only possible challenger is the editor of this collection, which is most fitting. I enjoyed the book immensely, even though I was in most cases rereading rather than solving for the first time.

No comments about The Ages of mathematics.

No comments about Adams's New Arithmetic: Arithmetic, In Which The Principles Of Operating By Numbers Are Analytically Explained And Synthetically Applied.

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