Mathematics in Western Culture

This is a brilliantly written book, which helps me to understand many mathematical topics that hitherto have been a bit of a blur. Highly recommended.

Clarifies science, math, philosophy. Makes Western culture so much more understandable.

Excellent service and a very nice and clean copy of the book.

I graduated in physics several years ago. It happens in life that you first do things and later you understand what you have done. With this book it happened to me to understand most of what I have studied after I have read it. It was a turning point in my life and in my career too. This doesn't mean it will be the same for everybody but surely that was my experience. Since I have read it, I have never forgot the following paragraph. When earth was put apart Granted that it was the superior mathematics of the new theory which inspired Copernicus and Kepler, and later Galileo, to repudiate religious convictions, scientific arguments, common sense, and well-entrenched habits of thought, how did the theory help to shape modern times? First, Copernican theory has done more to determine the content of modern science than is generally recognized. The most powerful and most useful single law of science is Newton's law of gravitation. Without anticipating here the discussion reserved for a more appropriate place in this book we can say that the best experimental evidence for this law, the evidence which established it, depends entirely on the heliocentric theory. Second, this theory is responsible for a new trend in science and human thought, barely perceptible, at the time but all-important today. Since our eyes do not see, nor our bodies feel, the rotation and revolution of the Earth, the new theory rejected the evidence of the senses- Things were not what they seemed to be. Sense data could be misleading and reason was the reliable guide. Copernicus and Kepler thereby set the precedent that guides modern science, namely, that reason and mathematics are more important in understanding and interpreting the universe than the evidence of the senses. Vast portions of electrical and atomic theory and the whole theory of relativity would never have been conceived if scientists had not come to accept the reliance upon reason first exemplified by Copernican theory. In this very significant sense Copernicus and Kepler began the Age of Reason, in addition to fulfilling the cardinal function of scientists and mathematicians, that is, to provide a rational comprehension of the universe. By deflating the stock of Homo sapiens, Copernican theory reopened questions that the guardians of Western civilization had been answering dogmatically upon the basis of Christian theology. Once there had been only one answer; now there are ten or twenty to such basic questions as: Why does man desire to live and for what purpose? Why should he be moral and principled? Why seek to preserve the race? It is one thing for man to answer such questions in the belief that he is the child and ward of a generous, powerful and provident God. It is another to answer them knowing that he is a speck of dust in a cyclone. Mathematics in Western culture, Morris Kline, 1953

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