The Infinite Tablet
The Infinite Tablet

Contents

Mathematical ideas from Sumer to Gödel, tracing how mathematics grew from practical problems into abstract thought.

Prologue — Why Does Mathematics Exist? Prologue
Ch. 1–4 The Ancient World 3000–200 BCE
Ch. 1
The Clay Tablet Accountants Sumer & Babylon — mathematics as a technology of administration.
Ch. 2
The Rope Stretchers of the Nile Egypt — practical geometry and the first numerical recipes.
Ch. 3
The Dangerous Idea of Proof Greece — Thales, Pythagoras, and why certainty requires argument.
Ch. 4
The World's First Think Tank Alexandria — Euclid, Archimedes, and the geometry that lasted two millennia.
Ch. 5–8 East & Early Modern 400–1700 CE
Ch. 5
The Gift of Nothing India — the invention of zero and positional notation.
Ch. 6
The House of Wisdom Baghdad — al-Khwārizmī, algebra, and the preservation of knowledge.
Ch. 7
The School at the Edge of the Ocean Kerala — infinite series centuries before Newton.
Ch. 8
How to Aim a Cannonball Europe — Galileo, Descartes, and the mathematisation of nature.
Ch. 9–12 The Modern Turn 1650–1900
Ch. 9
The Invention of Change Newton & Leibniz — calculus and the mathematics of motion.
Ch. 10
The Number That Should Not Exist Complex numbers — imaginary, indispensable, and deeply real.
Ch. 11
The Mathematics of Maybe Probability — from gambling tables to the laws of nature.
Ch. 12
The End of Obvious Space Non-Euclidean geometry — when the fifth postulate finally fell.
Ch. 13–16 The Frontier 1830–1931
Ch. 13
The Mathematics of Symmetry Group theory — the hidden structure behind physical laws.
Ch. 14
How Big Is Infinity? Cantor — different sizes of infinity and the shock they caused.
Ch. 15
The Geometry of the Universe Riemann, Einstein — curved space and the shape of physical reality.
Ch. 16
The Limits of Certainty Gödel — what mathematics cannot prove about itself.
Epilogue — Mathematics as a Living Thing Epilogue Bibliography Back