| Mathematics as a Culture Clue - a Review of Rudolf Taschner's "Numbers at Work: A Cultural Perspective" |
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bridges vol. 13, April 2007 / Book Review by Philip J. Davis 
Some years back, the magazine section editor of a national newspaper rang me up and asked me to contribute a piece on
mathematics. I was flattered by his request, and asked my caller whether he had anything specific in mind. "Whatever you want, providing it attracts my readers." Carte blanche? Well, not exactly. The challenge of mathematics popularization is attracting a readership that, though well educated, is largely ignorant of the subject and suffers from varying degrees of math phobia (which might have been the case with this editor: My provided piece, What Should the President Know About Mathematics, was "too technical" according to him. It never got published).
Indeed, what will attract a general readership to mathematics? Bookshelves now abound with popularizations, and each author solves the problem in an individual way. Some go for mathematical puzzles, tricks, and conundrums. Some for historic (and often eccentric) geniuses. Some emphasize the mind-boggling, the paradoxical, the arcane, the transcendental, the philosophical, even the theological (what, after all, is infinity?). Some write novels or sci-fi stories with a mathematical underlay. And these days - it's becoming a trend - some collaborate with artists to produce comic books (oops, pardon, graphic novels) and multimedia material on the subject.
Rudolf Taschner has taken a different route and arrived at a unique approach having the strong personal flavor of a mathematician who is both a humanist and a scientist and who, given a topic, is able to free-associate on it endlessly. Like the wind that "bloweth where it listeth," Taschner's memory, interests, and trains of thought lead everywhere, be it to any of the aspects of math previously mentioned, or to moralizing on the tragic events of the Twentieth Century. |
