Friday, May 8, 2009

The Mystery of the Aleph by Amir D. Aczel. ISBN 1-56858-105-X. The subtitle is Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity. This book is about the history of infinity. It is less technical than the David Foster Wallace book. Like that other book this one is mostly about Georg Cantor, but also covers Zeno (and other Greeks), Galileo, Gödel, Cohen and others. The book is well written and easy to read. The explanations of the more technical parts of the story are a bit over simplified, but still enjoyable for someone interested in this subject. This book plays up the idea that the study of infinity causes insanity.