Just finished The Large, the Small and the Human Mind by Roger Penrose, Malcolm Longair, Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartwright, and Stephen Hawking. Many of the arguments were beyond my comprehension, and the math left me wishing I had paid more attention in school. In short, the book left me feeling pretty stupid; the way I felt the first time I read Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. But Hawking’s book seems much easier to understand now than when it was first published. Perhaps in another 20 years, if I’m still around (which I doubt), I may start to get a handle on this book.
Perhaps at least one of the books I read this year should be a book on mathematics.
|