
Great Circles
The Transits of Mathematics and Poetry
Emily Rolfe Grosholz(Author)
Springer (Publisher)
Published in December 2018
Book
Hardback
XII, 274 pages
978-3-319-98230-4 (ISBN)
Description
This volume explores the interaction of poetry and mathematics by looking at analogies that link them. The form that distinguishes poetry from prose has mathematical structure (lifting language above the flow of time), as do the thoughtful ways in which poets bring the infinite into relation with the finite. The history of mathematics exhibits a dramatic narrative inspired by a kind of troping, as metaphor opens, metonymy and synecdoche elaborate, and irony closes off or shifts the growth of mathematical knowledge.
The first part of the book is autobiographical, following the author through her discovery of these analogies, revealed by music, architecture, science fiction, philosophy, and the study of mathematics and poetry. The second part focuses on geometry, the circle and square, launching us from Shakespeare to Housman, from Euclid to Leibniz. The third part explores the study of dynamics, inertial motion and transcendental functions, from Descartes to Newton, and in 20th c. poetry. The final part contemplates infinity, as it emerges in modern set theory and topology, and in contemporary poems, including narrative poems about modern cosmology.
Reviews / Votes
"The author is mostly writing for a broad audience, so much of the mathematics is presented so as to be accessible to a not necessarily mathematical audience. ... Great Circles provides an interesting example of the human side of mathematics." (Jason M. Graham, Mathematical Reviews, August, 2019)More details
Product info
Book
Series
Edition
2018
Language
English
Place of publication
Cham
Switzerland
Publishing group
Springer International Publishing
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
11 s/w Abbildungen, 31 farbige Abbildungen
15 schwarz-weiße Abbildungen, Bibliographie
Dimensions
Height: 241 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
600 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-319-98230-4 (9783319982304)
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-98231-1
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2018
1st Edition
Springer
€53.49
Available for download
Person
Emily Grosholz is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. She earned her PhD from Yale University and her BA from the University of Chicago. Her most recent philosophy book, Starry Reckoning: Reference and Analysis in Mathematics and Cosmology, was awarded the 2017 Fernando Gil International Prize for Philosophy of Science. She has published eight books of poetry and ten authored or edited books of philosophy, and has written many literary reviews and essays.
Content
Preface.- I. A Life in Mathematics and Poetry.- II. The Homestead.- III.- Shipping Out.- IV. The Sky's the Limit!.- Coda.