Maths

My recent leisure reading is 100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know by John Barrow.

The author is a professor of mathematical sciences at Cambridge University, and the book is about mathematical principles behind many common (but largely neglected) things we encounter in daily life, from geometry to statistics, from how a bar code is constructed to the difference between an A4 and a letter-size paper.

How do I find this book?

My decision is simple: I shall keep it for my future reference, and I am sure I will look up other books by the same author. Frequent visitors of this site would know very well I am a fan of Baruch Spinoza, and I believe mathematics is the purest form of philosophy. There could be a universe with a different set of rule for physics, but I cannot imagine God could create a place where the rules and constants of mathematics do not apply – because these are actually intrinsic attributes of our Lord.

We call it pantheism.