Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Book report: Is God a Mathematician?, by Mario Livio First off, this book has nothing to do with God. When scientists – and mathematicians – say “God”, they don’t mean God, they mean something like “nature” or “the universe” or “the laws of physics”. So, the title of this book actually means something like, “Why is the universe so mathematical?” As Mario Livio points out, this question actually has to do with a couple of connected questions. You see, mathematicians split into two philosophical camps: some mathematicians believe that mathematics has a kind of independent existence of its own, and that we discover its pre-existing truths; others believe that mathematics is invented, something that we create as we go along, like the rules of a complex game. So, which is it? Is mathematics discovered or invented? There’s a related question: why does mathematics describe the universe so well? When you took physics or chemistry classes in school, you probably had to learn a jillion for