Description

While taking a class on infinity at Stanford in the late 1980s, Ravi Kapoor discovers that he is confronting the same mathematical and philosophical dilemmas that his mathematician grandfather had faced many decades earlierand that had landed him in jail. Charged under an obscure blasphemy law in a small New Jersey town in 1919, Vijay Sahni was challenged by a sceptical judge to defend his belief that the certainty of mathematics can be extended to all human knowledgeincluding religion. Both Vijay and Ravi discover the powerand the fallibilityof what has long been considered the pinnacle of human certainty, Euclidean geometry. As grandfather and grandson struggle with the question of whether there can ever be absolute certainty in mathematics or life, they are forced to reconsider their fundamental beliefs and choices. Their stories hinge on their explorations of parallel developments in the study of geometry and infinityand the mathematics throughout is as rigorous and fascinating as the narrative and characters are compelling and complex. Moving and enlightening, A Certain Ambiguity is a story about what it means to face the extentand the limitsof human knowledge.

While taking a class on infinity at Stanford in the late 1980s, Ravi Kapoor discovers that he is confronting the same mathematical and philosophical dilemmas that his mathematician grandfather had faced many decades earlierand that had landed him in jail. Charged under an obscure blasphemy law in a small New Jersey town in 1919, Vijay Sahni was challenged by a sceptical judge to defend his belief that the certainty of mathematics can be extended to all human knowledgeincluding religion. Both Vijay and Ravi discover the powerand the fallibilityof what has long been considered the pinnacle of human certainty, Euclidean geometry....  Read More