Everything and More A Compact History of Infinity

Wallace, David Foster

ISBN 10: 0393003388 / ISBN 13: 9780393003383

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2003

About this Item

Crease in front dustjacket flap. Now protected in a clear mylar cover. ; Full number line. ; Great Discoveries; 8.10 X 5.50 X 1 inches; 336 pages.

Seller Inventory # 26933

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Everything and More A Compact History of Infinity
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, New York
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393003388
• ISBN 13: 9780393003383
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition; First Printing.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science

About this title

Synopsis

The best-selling author of Infinite Jest on the two-thousand-year-old quest to understand infinity.

One of the outstanding voices of his generation, David Foster Wallace has won a large and devoted following for the intellectual ambition and bravura style of his fiction and essays. Now he brings his considerable talents to the history of one of math's most enduring puzzles: the seemingly paradoxical nature of infinity.

Is infinity a valid mathematical property or a meaningless abstraction? The nineteenth-century mathematical genius Georg Cantor's answer to this question not only surprised him but also shook the very foundations upon which math had been built. Cantor's counterintuitive discovery of a progression of larger and larger infinities created controversy in his time and may have hastened his mental breakdown, but it also helped lead to the development of set theory, analytic philosophy, and even computer technology.

Smart, challenging, and thoroughly rewarding, Wallace's tour de force brings immediate and high-profile recognition to the bizarre and fascinating world of higher mathematics.

About the Author

David Foster Wallace (1962―2008) is the author of Infinite Jest, Girl with Curious Hair, Everything and More, The Broom of the System, and other fiction and nonfiction. Among his honors, he received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Whiting Writers' Award.