William Goldbloom Bloch's Books

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel

By: William Goldbloom Bloch

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The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel

By: William Goldbloom Bloch

The Library of Babel" is arguably Jorge Luis Borges' best known story--memorialized along with Borges on an Argentine postage stamp. Now, in The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel, William Goldbloom Bloch takes readers on a fascinating tour of the mathematical ideas hidden within one of the classic works of modern literature. Written in the vein of Douglas R. Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach, this original and imaginative book sheds light on one of Borges' most complex, richly layered works. Bloch begins each chapter with a mathematical idea--combinatorics, topology, geometry, information theory--followed by examples and illustrations that put flesh on the theoretical bones. In this way, he provides many fascinating insights into Borges' Library. He explains, for instance, a straightforward way to calculate how many books are in the Library--an easily notated but literally unimaginable number--and also shows that, if each book were the size of a grain of sand, the entire universe could only hold a fraction of the books in the Library. Indeed, if each book were the size of a proton, our universe would still not be big enough to hold anywhere near all the books. Given Borges' well-known affection for mathematics, this exploration of the story through the eyes of a humanistic mathematician makes a unique and important contribution to the body of Borgesian criticism. Bloch not only illuminates one of the great short stories of modern literature but also exposes the reader--including those more inclined to the literary world--to many intriguing and entrancing mathematical ideas.

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Page Count

213

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0199887306

ISBN 13

9780199887309

The Rigor of Angels

Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

By: William Egginton

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The Rigor of Angels

Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

By: William Egginton

A NEW YORK TIMES AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explored the greatest enigmas in the universe—the nature of free will, the strange fabric of the cosmos, the true limits of the mind—and each in their own way uncovered a revelatory truth about our place in the world “[A] mind-expanding book. . . . Elegantly written.” —The New York Times “A remarkable synthesis of the thoughts, ideas, and discoveries of three of the greatest minds that our species has produced.” —John Banville, The Wall Street Journal Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm’s absurdity when he had his own epiphany—that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality. Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant pushed the assumptions of human reason to their mind-bending conclusions, but emerged with an idea that crowned a towering philosophical system—that the human mind has fundamental limits, and those limits undergird both our greatest achievements as well as our missteps. Through fiction, science, and philosophy, the work of these three thinkers coalesced around the powerful, haunting fact that there is an irreconcilable difference between reality “out there” and reality as we experience it. Out of this profound truth comes a multitude of galvanizing ideas: the notion of selfhood, free will, and purpose in human life; the roots of morality, aesthetics, and reason; and the origins and nature of the cosmos itself. As each of these thinkers shows, every one of us has an incomplete picture of the world. But it's only as mortal, finite beings are we able to experience the world in its richness and breathtaking majesty. A soaring and lucid reflection on the lives and work of Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant, The Rigor of Angels movingly demonstrates that the mysteries of our place in the world may always loom over us—not as a threat, but as a reminder of our humble humanity.

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369

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Pantheon

Published Date

ISBN 10

0593316312

ISBN 13

9780593316313

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel

By: William Goldbloom Bloch

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The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel

By: William Goldbloom Bloch

Combinatorics -- Topology and cosmology -- Information theory -- Geometry and Graph Theory -- Real Analysis -- More Combinatorics -- A Homomorphism

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213

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Oxford University Press

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ISBN 10

0195334574

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9780195334579

Book's by William Goldbloom Bloch

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel

The Rigor of Angels

The Rigor of Angels

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel

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