Review of THE ART OF MORE
The discovery and importance of mathematics
I was pretty good at math growing up. I was in the advanced track all though grade school and found it relatively easy. Until my last year when I took calculus and I stopped out. I carried on with statistics all through college. I now write for a living. I have little need to do math.
It’s unfortunate that most of us stop doing math. Most are grateful for it because they hate it, but math literally makes our world. In The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization, Michael Brooks takes us on a historical journey of each major branch of mathematics, from basic arithmetic to calculus and beyond to show how each discovery afforded the most impactful innovations in the last millennium.
In graduate school, I took a phenomenal animal cognition class with Dr. Jennifer Vonk (one of the best courses I’ve ever taken). We wrangled with core questions of animal’s minds, such as “can animals count”. Brooks takes a similar approach to his opening framing. Animals, humans included, can’t really count. Not in a maths sense. Minds can understand the quantities of one, two, maybe three. After that counting is relative. More verses less. Not exact counting.
But humans eventually discovered (or created) numbers and maths - and it changed our world.
The Art of More details the history and implications of arithmetic, geometry, algebra, calculus, logarithms, imaginary numbers, statistics, and information theory. Each chapter explains the history of each area, the major historical players, and outlines the basic concepts. This means that some pages are filled with equations that, unless you’re in professions that use more than basic arithmetic, you probably haven’t seen since high school or college. Although these pages can seem intimidating, they are there as a demonstration rather than the main point. The idea is to present the concepts and how they afforded innovations.
Arithmetic gave us the foundations for tracking, counting, and dividing things – giving us civilization. Geometry allowed us to conquer and create things – giving us maps, navigation, and architecture. Algebra got us organized – giving us search algorithms and predictions. Calculus allows us to engineer – giving us the ability to predict the unpredictable, and is “the most ubiquitously applicable innovation in all of history”. Logarithms and imaginary numbers allowed simplification of equations – giving us the scientific revolution and the launch of the electrical age. And statistics and information theory gave us our modern world, through causal inference, encryption, and more.
What struck me most throughout this book was just how recent mathematics is. Major breakthroughs and new discoveries mostly happened in the last few hundred years, leading to an acceleration of civilization, the industrial revolution, and the technological revolution of our own lifetime.
The role of mathematics in our lives is remarkable, and it is sad how few people really know how to leverage their power. The Art of More is a fascinating book and a must read.
“In school we are assured that maths is an essential skill; a passport for success; something that we have to pick up. And so we obediently, though often reluctantly, gather the tools of maths and do our best to learn how to use them. Some enjoy it, most don’t. And the, at some point, almost every one of us gives up.”
Format: Hardcover
Published: January 2022
Publisher: Pantheon
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe by Steven Strogatz (2019)
Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain by Grace Lindsay (2021)
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