Status
Available
Call number
Publication
High Stakes
Pages
239
Description
"A real-life mathematical mystery Nicolas Bourbaki was perhaps the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century. Responsible for the emergence of the "new math" that swept through American and foreign education systems in the middle of the century, Bourbaki originated the modern concept of the mathematical proof and is credited with the introduction of rigor into the discipline. It can be said that no working mathematician in the world today is free of the influence of Nicolas Bourbaki's seminal work." "This is the story of both Bourbaki and the world that created him. And it is the story of an elaborate intellectual joke - because Bourbaki, the author of dozens of acclaimed papers and one of the foremost mathematicians of his day - never existed."--Jacket.… (more)
Collection
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
239 p.; 7.7 inches
ISBN
1843440342 / 9781843440345
User reviews
LibraryThing member pw0327
Amir Aczel is as frustrating an author as you will find anywhere. The man is bright, no question about it. He also has impeccable taste when it comes to interesting subjects to investiagte. He has written books on various mathematical subjects: Fermat's Last Theorem, Descarte, and now Nicolas
The story of Bourbaki is a fascinating one, so I was eager to read this book. The miniscule size of this book should have been a red flag, Aczel's reputation, at least in my head, should have been another, but I proceeded to buy it because I am an eternal optimist and I believe that people can and will surprise me and change my preconceived notions.
It didn't work this time, nor any other times when I placed my faith in Aczel. So where to begin?
1) As the previous reviewers had stated, there are no math in this book. No explanation of what Bourbaki was up to. How do you write a book on mathematicians without writing about mathematics? I understand that one does not wish to populate the book with excesive mathematical details but the power of math is in its compact notations. He does try to explain things in general terms, but a few figures and a few lines of math would have done wonders to his narrative.
2) Not enough back ground material was covered. When Aczel is trying to explain the application of structuralism in linguistics and in psychology, he was doing some extremely fine narration of extremely dense and abstract ideas and putting them into the context of what Levi-Strauss and others are trying to do, but he was not consistent in narrating the other parts of the book, he did a lot of hand waving and hot air generating.
3) As an author writing about people, one can definitely become enamoured with certain people and grow to dislike certain others. Aczel definitely fell in love with Alexander Grothendieck's story and disliked Andre and Simohne Weil. It is irresponsible, however, for Aczel come out and say that the reason for the demise of Bourbaki is because Grothendieck left the group without explaining fully WHY category theory is a more reasonable foundation. It is equally irresponsible for the ad hominem attacks on Andre Weil's character without citing specific instances of his behavior.
4) The book reads like a very bad draft, there is no continuity to the history and the book is not built around mathematical logic nor is it based on chronological order, it is as if Aczel decided to put all these bits of stories and mathematics together haphazardously. The writing is very jagged. Reading and making sense of the story is extremely fatiguing because the author made every effort to confuse the reader. Many anecdotes are repeated for no apparent reason and they are repeated without qualifiers or additional information.
5) There does not seem to be any care taken to build a case for or against anything. The author just scattered facts and his own opinions out and it was up to the readers to figure out a logic for themselves.
6) As in his previous books, the author seem to be building toward a conclusion, a crescendo in the narrative, yet after the build up, there is no crescendo, nor a diminuendo, there is just a monotone white noise in the background.
Like I said, this is a massively wasted effort towards a very interesting subject. The only thing that I have gotten from this book is the germination of various subjects that the author mentioned in passing, so thank you Amir Aczel for your bibliography and a desultory book report.
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Bourbaki. Yet his followthrough and his writing habits are infuriatingly inconsistent and shows signs of discordant chaos in his reasoning. He also has a disconcerting proclivity towards doing a hack job on a subject to get paid and then moving on to better things.The story of Bourbaki is a fascinating one, so I was eager to read this book. The miniscule size of this book should have been a red flag, Aczel's reputation, at least in my head, should have been another, but I proceeded to buy it because I am an eternal optimist and I believe that people can and will surprise me and change my preconceived notions.
It didn't work this time, nor any other times when I placed my faith in Aczel. So where to begin?
1) As the previous reviewers had stated, there are no math in this book. No explanation of what Bourbaki was up to. How do you write a book on mathematicians without writing about mathematics? I understand that one does not wish to populate the book with excesive mathematical details but the power of math is in its compact notations. He does try to explain things in general terms, but a few figures and a few lines of math would have done wonders to his narrative.
2) Not enough back ground material was covered. When Aczel is trying to explain the application of structuralism in linguistics and in psychology, he was doing some extremely fine narration of extremely dense and abstract ideas and putting them into the context of what Levi-Strauss and others are trying to do, but he was not consistent in narrating the other parts of the book, he did a lot of hand waving and hot air generating.
3) As an author writing about people, one can definitely become enamoured with certain people and grow to dislike certain others. Aczel definitely fell in love with Alexander Grothendieck's story and disliked Andre and Simohne Weil. It is irresponsible, however, for Aczel come out and say that the reason for the demise of Bourbaki is because Grothendieck left the group without explaining fully WHY category theory is a more reasonable foundation. It is equally irresponsible for the ad hominem attacks on Andre Weil's character without citing specific instances of his behavior.
4) The book reads like a very bad draft, there is no continuity to the history and the book is not built around mathematical logic nor is it based on chronological order, it is as if Aczel decided to put all these bits of stories and mathematics together haphazardously. The writing is very jagged. Reading and making sense of the story is extremely fatiguing because the author made every effort to confuse the reader. Many anecdotes are repeated for no apparent reason and they are repeated without qualifiers or additional information.
5) There does not seem to be any care taken to build a case for or against anything. The author just scattered facts and his own opinions out and it was up to the readers to figure out a logic for themselves.
6) As in his previous books, the author seem to be building toward a conclusion, a crescendo in the narrative, yet after the build up, there is no crescendo, nor a diminuendo, there is just a monotone white noise in the background.
Like I said, this is a massively wasted effort towards a very interesting subject. The only thing that I have gotten from this book is the germination of various subjects that the author mentioned in passing, so thank you Amir Aczel for your bibliography and a desultory book report.
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LibraryThing member priamel
As has been pointed out by other people here, this book is a wasted opportunity. There is a good story in the Bourbaki mathematical collective and a very good story in Alexandre Grothendieck. But he leaves out or butchers so much!
1) there's no attempt at explaining any mathematical idea that I
2) if he attempts to explain how the Bourbaki idea of a structure differs from a common-sense one it passed me by;
3) whenever a new person is introduced, we get a new paragraph and 'X was born in [YEAR]...'--no variation at all!;
4) in skimming over Oulipo, he completely fails to mention Georges Perec--whose biography in many ways mirrors Grothendieck's--a great writer who produced genuine masterpieces on the basis of some unpromising-sounding procedures;
5) while I know a certain amount about linguistics and mathematics, I certainly didn't glean a decent idea of what structuralism is or was from this book;
6) I'm not too sure about the bibliography either: the 'Essays on General Linguistics' attributed to Jakobson is unknown to both Amazon and Bookfinder;
7) there is no attempt to assess whether Bourbaki was a good or bad thing--in fact, I've never met anyone (including mathematicians trained in France) who thought their influence was other than negative;
8) similarly, it *should* be easy enough to chart the rise and fall of Bourbaki's influence in terms of sales, citations, etc rather than just relying on unsupported assertions;
9) who is the artist of the title?
Tsk, tsk!
1) there's no attempt at explaining any mathematical idea that I
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noticed;2) if he attempts to explain how the Bourbaki idea of a structure differs from a common-sense one it passed me by;
3) whenever a new person is introduced, we get a new paragraph and 'X was born in [YEAR]...'--no variation at all!;
4) in skimming over Oulipo, he completely fails to mention Georges Perec--whose biography in many ways mirrors Grothendieck's--a great writer who produced genuine masterpieces on the basis of some unpromising-sounding procedures;
5) while I know a certain amount about linguistics and mathematics, I certainly didn't glean a decent idea of what structuralism is or was from this book;
6) I'm not too sure about the bibliography either: the 'Essays on General Linguistics' attributed to Jakobson is unknown to both Amazon and Bookfinder;
7) there is no attempt to assess whether Bourbaki was a good or bad thing--in fact, I've never met anyone (including mathematicians trained in France) who thought their influence was other than negative;
8) similarly, it *should* be easy enough to chart the rise and fall of Bourbaki's influence in terms of sales, citations, etc rather than just relying on unsupported assertions;
9) who is the artist of the title?
Tsk, tsk!
Show Less
LibraryThing member LMHTWB
I was really looking forward to reading this book -- I'd read other books by Aczel and enjoyed them, I wanted to know more about the fictional mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki, and the title intrigued me. What could be more interesting to a math geek than a 'biography' of a fictional mathematician
Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in this book for many reasons. Here are several of the reasons:
1) There are sections that seem totally unedited. The same ideas are repeated over and over, as if the author was trying to perfect the sentence structure. No new material is added -- just variations on the basic sentences.
2) I still have no clear idea what Bourbaki did for the math world. The author, for example, asserts that Bourbaki was responsible for the New Math ideas which influenced teaching of math in the US, but that is, honestly, as much detail as the author gives.
3) There are several sections which deal with structuralism in linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and even economics. Fine, but these sections were not linked to the topic of Bourbaki.
4) While the math that Bourbaki did change is fairly complex and abstract, the author made no attempt to explain mathematically the changes Bourbaki wrought.
5) The author was fascinated by the life and mathematics of Alexandre Grothendieck. In some ways, he was the primary focus of the book, and perhaps, the author should have written a biography of him and not Bourbaki.
This book frustrated me and left me sorely disappointed.
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who shaped 20th century mathematics?Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in this book for many reasons. Here are several of the reasons:
1) There are sections that seem totally unedited. The same ideas are repeated over and over, as if the author was trying to perfect the sentence structure. No new material is added -- just variations on the basic sentences.
2) I still have no clear idea what Bourbaki did for the math world. The author, for example, asserts that Bourbaki was responsible for the New Math ideas which influenced teaching of math in the US, but that is, honestly, as much detail as the author gives.
3) There are several sections which deal with structuralism in linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and even economics. Fine, but these sections were not linked to the topic of Bourbaki.
4) While the math that Bourbaki did change is fairly complex and abstract, the author made no attempt to explain mathematically the changes Bourbaki wrought.
5) The author was fascinated by the life and mathematics of Alexandre Grothendieck. In some ways, he was the primary focus of the book, and perhaps, the author should have written a biography of him and not Bourbaki.
This book frustrated me and left me sorely disappointed.
Show Less
LibraryThing member wester
Interesting subject, irritating writing style, no math.
Call number
MATH A.