Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry @ richardeward.com

Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry
by Ian Stewart
from Perseus Books Group

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• Bargain Price

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

• Nearly gets the balance of history and math right
  This book tries to pull off a difficult trick: being both a history of mathematics and mathematicians, and also a primer on group theory and symmetry. Glossing over the real technical details, Stewart does a good job explaining the math, but a good deal of it still went over my head--although he tries to keep things simple, he expects you to actually *remember* some key parts of high-school math.
  Math sections alternate with passages about the lives of the discoverers of various theoretical advances.... more info

• You can't trisect an angle with a compass and straightedge
  Why Beauty Is Truth: A History of Symmetry
  S. Marsh statement "you can trisect an angle" is not true in its historical context.
  Historical context: It is not possible to trisect all angles using only a compass and a straightedge (unmarked ruler).
  In his book, Stewart says that it is possible to compute values to great precision,(which includes using iteration) but not by compass and ruler. He does mention that it is possible to trisect some angles, specifically mentioning 180 which trisects... more info

• I liked it, but, you can trisect an angle
  Not only can Achilles catch a tortise, he can also trisect an angle.
  It just takes infinite iterations.
  As iterations -> infinity, angle -> trisection
  I figured it out in eighth grade, and later was glad to see that the theory of limits wasn't something I'd made up.
  But for a book that is a combination of light history and fun explorations, it makes for a good holiday read.
  Other than repeating the old saw that you can't tri-sect an angle one too many times.
  You just have to be... more info

• let's judge this book by its cover!
  It would take most people just a few milliseconds to recognize that the butterfly on the book's cover is asymmetric. Indeed, the claim that nature is symmetric, made in this book (and so often elsewhere - e.g., by Weyl) is manifestly false. (BTW: check the dimensions of Leonardo's so-called Vitruvian Man to discover - perhaps - the real Da Vinci code!) The apotheosis of symmetry is to be found in the architecture of Albert Speer. The apotheosis of asymmetry is to be found in the architecture of the universe... more info

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