Nature's Numbers: The Unreal Reality of Mathematics

Nature's Numbers: The Unreal Reality of Mathematics

By: Ian Stewart

The main purpose of this book is to show how many uncertain things that are involved in math. The chapters dive into the deeper meanings of what is meant by some of math's most complicated questions. The chapters are entitled; The Natural Order, What Mathematics Is For, What Mathematics Is About, The Constants of Change, From Violins to Videos, Broken Symmetry, The Rhythm of Life, Do Dice Play God? and Drops, Dynamics, and Daisies.

My favorite chapter is chapter 8, Do Dice Play God. I like this chapter the best because it talks about some of the more interesting questions in math. One of the topics that is discussed is something that we encounter almost everyday. The scenario that they is the fact that we walk down stairs almost everyday and never have a problem, and then comes the day that we twist our ankle. Another scenario that they give that hit close to home because we talked about it in class, was the example of placing a bet on a favorite horse and all of the sudden in the last corner the horse falls and loses. Albert Einstein refused to believe in a universe in which God plays dice, it is more realistic to believe in a universe in which dice play God. Another great mathematical astronomer named Pierre-Simon de Laplace claimed that our world is deterministic, meaning that it is governed by chance.

There is a new theory called nonlinear dynamics, also known as the chaos theory. This theory tries to prove Laplace wrong. It is changing the way we think about law and chance, order and disorder, and predictability and chance. Modern physics says that nature is ruled by chance on its smallest scales of space and time. The example given in the book is that there is no physical difference between a uranium atom that is about to decay and one that is not. This just goes to show us that there are many gray areas in the world of mathematics and physics.

The book says that there are two ways to look at this concept. The first is quantum mechanics and the second is classical mechanics. According to quantum mechanics the horse races and Einstein's dice theory are not unpredictable because of the hidden variables that are involved with each of these.

In conclusion, I am glad that I chose this book to do my report on because it really opened my eyes