자료유형  

 단행본

International Standard Book Number  

9780226199948 : \39550

Language Code  

본문언어 - eng, 원저작언어 - fre

Dewey Decimal Classification Number  

509-21

Main Entry-Personal Name  

Ekeland, Ivar

Title Statement  

The best of all possible worlds : mathematics and destiny / Ivar Ekeland

Publication, Distribution, etc. (Imprint  

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2006

Physical Description  

207 p : ill. ; 24 cm

Bibliography, Etc. Note  

Includes bibliographical references (p. [197]-198) and index.

Formatted Contents Note  

완전내용:Keeping the beat -- The birth of modern science -- The least action principle -- From computations to geometry -- Poincare and beyond -- Pandora＇s box -- May the best one win -- The end of nature -- The common good -- A personal conclusion

Summary, Etc.  

요약Optimists believe this is the best of all possible worlds. And pessimists fear that might really be the case. But what is the best of all possible worlds? How do we define it? Is it the world that operates the most efficiently? Or the one in which most people are comfortable and content? Questions such as these have preoccupied philosophers and theologians for ages, but there was a time, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when scientists and mathematicians felt they could provide the answer. This book is their story. Ivar Ekeland here takes the reader on a journey through scientific attempts to envision the best of all possible worlds. He begins with the French physicist Maupertuis, whose least action principle asserted that everything in nature occurs in the way that requires the least possible action. This idea, Ekeland shows, was a pivotal breakthrough in mathematics, because it was the first expression of the concept of optimization, or the creation of systems that are the most efficient or functional. Although the least action principle was later elaborated on and overshadowed by the theories of Leonhard Euler and Gottfried Leibniz, the concept of optimization that emerged from it is an important one that touches virtually every scientific discipline today. Tracing the profound impact of optimization and the unexpected ways in which it has influenced the study of mathematics, biology, economics, and even politics, Ekeland reveals throughout how the idea of optimization has driven some of our greatest intellectual breakthroughs. The result is a dazzling display of eruditionone that will be essential reading for popular-science buffs and historians of science alike.

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Science Mathematics

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Mathematical analysis

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Logic, Symbolic and mathematical

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Human behavior

Subject Added Entry-Topical Term  

Ethics

Index Term-Uncontrolled  

Science Mathematical analysis Logic Symbolic and mathematical Human behavior Ethics

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

mathematics and destiny

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Keeping the beat

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The birth of modern science

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

The least action principle

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

From computations to geometry

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

Poincare and beyond

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

Pandora＇s box

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

May the best one win

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

The end of nature

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

The common good

Added Entry-Uncontrolled Related/Analyti  

A personal conclusion

Control Number  

sacl:125089