Reddit mentions of Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality

Application is all fine and good. It's amazing when we use math to do create new wonders. But math is art.

Let me steal and modify an analogy from Dr. Edward Frankel. You go to school and at school you learn art by learning how to paint fences and walls. Just ordinary fences in yards and ordinary walls in homes. Because if you are going to get a job painting, it's going to be by painting walls and fences. You've been trained to associate visual art with practicality and never learned about the Greats like Van Gogh, Picasso, DaVinci, Pollock and you don't hear of their works either. Because of this system, people go out claiming that they are familiar with art and hate it. Or, they leave wanting to get into a noble profession like design but have no interest in art that they can't apply. Should we hide the great gifts from these great artists, simply because most people want to become interior designers rather than studio artists? Is the work of Van Gogh made any less important by the fact that he didn't paint a hospital?

Math is an intrinsically amazing subject. Like all art, it is amazing for it's history, the stories of it's artists and their ideas that reflect humanity through the ages. For other artistic mediums, the general public at least knows the names of the great contributors and when they see or hear it, they know that they are looking at something amazing even if they don't understand it. There is a reverence for it, whereas math has an animosity. Even people who get quite good at using it have an apathy for anything they can't immediately scavenge.

Art offers a new way of thinking, inspires creativity and encourages people to break rules. Math is very strong in each of these categories. Even if you're not going to paint a masterpiece, learning how to see as Picasso did and learning why/how he broke the rules will only help you, not only in your professional life, but in every aspect of it!

Love and Math

This little gem of a book covers everything in math from knot theory to abstract algebra. However, it's written in a very clear and concise way that it feels more like a narrative than a math book. Frenkel intersperses his tangents about number theory with his own, personal experiences in Russia and the United States, in particular, with his experiences with antisemitism in the USSR. While the book does deal with advanced mathematics, it's easily understandable to anyone with a basic background in math. A wonderful read, and I would highly recommend it.

I'm not agreeing that it's a great idea to force your artsy girlfriend into loving math, but if she's open to it try this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465050743

The guy you mention on Numberphile: Edward Frenkel, read his book, it is awesome
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465050743

"Love and Math" by Edward Frenkel. Here's a link. I've been listening to it on Audiobook on long drives. It's great so far.

You're talking about Love and Math ( https://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465050743)

Big question. Most professional mathematicians view mathematical truths/objects as something existing in a platonic realm, that they get to explore and discover. I'd argue that the practice of research mathematics somehow tends to make this view feel intuitive, and a very passionate explanation of it (though perhaps not the most philosophically self-critical) can be found at Love and Math.

This view is not so shared by a large number of philosophers and physicists (who in the later case, I'd say tend to be very suspicious of dualism). The Wikipedia article on foundations of mathematics has a lot of more details. I recall that David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity and The Fabric of Reality contain examples of this view that felt particularly convincing.