Word: mathematicians
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...quantum theory is...complicated: "In quantum field theory, nature has been reduced to energetic fields made out of dimensionless (and, seen from the perspective of the classical world, non-existent) particles that causelessly and randomly come into and out of existence. It is pretty much impossible for the non-mathematician to understand how such a description might relate to the physical world. Quantum field theory is so abstract and mathematical that we really have little choice but to accept that such a description works...
...arguing with your biologist boyfriend, and you tell him, “Wait a minute. I think we’re trapped in an oppressive discourse”—and he has no idea that you’re talking about Foucault? Or what if your mathematician boyfriend slips his arm around your shoulders and says, “Hey, I think we need to reduce your genus by one?” Do you laugh, or do you dump him? Communication: kind of a bid deal. And yet I couldn’t stop thinking about that...
...last breath of air, before it’s shut beneath the gray exterior of a Soviet sarcophagus. The remaining three narrators are peripheral characters in Vargalas’ life—Martinas, a pontificating computer(less) programmer, Stefanija, a jealous and infertile seductress, and Gediminias, a brilliant mathematician turned jazz artist. There is no dialogue among these characters, only isolated observations. This completes the author’s metaphor of a poker game in which “everyone hides his cards, raises and raises the bet, grimaces and makes faces, hoping to deceive the others...
...Readers looking to glean divine revelations about the relationship between mathematics and the universe’s structure will be sorely disappointed by “Is God a Mathematician?” Livio leaves the reader with the ambiguous notion that mathematics is in part developed by the mathematicians who study it and also inherent to the natural world around us, waiting to be discovered by intrepid and persistent minds...
...Livio is most successful in communicating a deep respect for the power of mathematics and the intellectually rigorous theory behind it that many will never understand. By opening the door to mathematical theory, “Is God a Mathematician?” casts doubt on the absolute truths of arithmetic and geometry that are taught in school and brings Livio one step closer to making enthusiastic readers appreciate the wonder and sophistication of abstract math...