Audiology & Speech Pathology, Child & Infant Psychology & Psychiatry, Developmental Psychology, History of Mathematics

The Math Gene

Name: The Math Gene
Author: Keith J. Devlin
ISBN: 9780465016181

by Keith J. Devlin

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Overview

A groundbreaking book about math and language, from the well-known NPR commentator Keith DevlinIf people are endowed with a "number instinct" similar to the "language instinct"-as recent research suggests-then why can't everyone do math? In The Math Gene, mathematician and popular writer Keith Devlin attacks both sides of this question. Devlin offers a breathtakingly new theory of language development that describes how language evolved in two stages and how its main purpose was not communication. Devlin goes on to show that the ability to think mathematically arose out of the same symbol-manipulating ability that was so crucial to the very first emergence of true language. Why, then, can't we do math as well as we speak? The answer, says Devlin, is that we can and do-we just don't recognize when we're using mathematical reasoning.

About the Author, Keith J. Devlin

Keith Devlin is the Dean of the School of Social Science at St. Mary's College, Moraga, California, and a Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. He is the author of 22 books, one interactive CD-ROM, and over 65 technical research papers in mathematics. His voice is heard regularly on National Public Radio, on such programs as "Weekend Edition," "Talk of the Nation," "Science Friday," "Sounds Like Science," and "To the Best of Our Knowledge." His previous books include Life by the Numbers, the companion to a PBS series that aired in April and May, 1998; Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic; and The Language of Mathematics: Making the Invisible Visible.

Biography

Odds are, John Grisham doesn’t get interview questions like this: "If you could meet any mathematician, who would it be?"

But author Keith Devlin does, this time from Discover magazine as part of a January 2001 article coinciding with the publication of his book The Math Gene: How Mathematical Thinking Evolved and Why Numbers Are Like Gossip. His answer may go a long way toward explaining why he has managed to make the world of numbers not only understandable but also enjoyable to a segment of the population that can’t balance a checkbook without a net -- or backup from MIT.

“Isaac Newton,” Devlin told the inquiring minds at Discover. “He was a quarrelsome, egotistical person, but he also invented calculus. He did it, by the way, when he was a student at Cambridge. The Great Plague was going on, so the university was closed, and young Newton found himself without studies to do. Most 20-year-olds would think, ‘Whoopee! I’ll just have a good time.’ Newton went home and invented calculus.”

It is this same kind of passion for mathematics that has enabled Devlin, now the executive director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, to persuade readers that arithmetic, geometry and calculus can be a bracing addition to the stack on the bedside table. In The Math Gene, he explains the “innate sense of number” that lives inside the human mind and how the development of mathematical thinking is closely bound to the development of language. In Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind, he argues against the possibility of artificial intelligence, saying that computers are simply logic machines that cannot replicate the rational thought and communication that are part of human smarts. In his newest book, The Millennium Problems: The Seven Greatest Unsolved Mathematical Puzzles of Our Time, he explains a historic competition announced by a Cambridge, Massachusetts foundation in 2000: Anyone who could solve any one of seven of the most perplexing math problems of the current age would win $1 million.

In a 1999 review, the Economist noted that “Devlin succeeds both in giving us a glimpse of the internal beauty of the subject and in demonstrating its usefulness in the external world. The Language of Mathematics is lucidly written and richly illustrated, and remains accessible and enthusiastic throughout.”

On NPR’s Weekend Edition, where he has become a regular guest, Devlin is referred to simply as “The Math Guy,” or as host Scott Simon once put it “our white knight of the world of mathematics.”

And, going back to that provocative subtitle in The Math Gene, just how is math like gossip? “Mathematicians deal with a collection of objects -- numbers, triangles, groups, fields -- and ask questions like: ‘What is the relationship between Objects X and Y?. If X does this to Y, what will Y do back to X?’” he told Discover. “It's got plot, it's got characters, it's got relationships between them, and it's got life and emotion and passion and love and hate, a bit of everything you can find in a soap opera. On the other hand, a soap opera isn't going to get you to the moon and back. Mathematics can.”

Just don’t forget to carry the 1.

Good To Know

Devlin was the coauthor of the television special A Mathematical Mystery Tour, broadcast as part of the Nova series in 1984.

He once offered as proof of the human brain’s intuitive math skills the ability to judge speed and distance while driving and the ability to add up bowling scores.

Devlin once managed to explain the mathematical difference between a knot and a tangle to National Public Radio’s listeners.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

Whether he's instructing us about the mathematical skills of four month old babies, describing the deep structure of language or explaining where one of the theories of Jean Piaget went askew, Keith Devlin is lucid. The man who taught us that mathematics is the science of making the invisible visible knows that the keys to good science writing are clarity and simplicity. Of course, it helps that this subject matter is vital: One can't dispute the importance of improving our math skills or understanding the chicken and egg controversy of language evolution. Math Gene succeeds because the plainness of its exposition is match by the excitement of its ideas. Fine beach reading.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Recently, luminaries like Steven Pinker have shown lay audiences neat theories about how language works and how our "language instinct" evolved. In the same years, writers like David Berlinski have made higher math entertaining and accessible. Here, prolific math writer and NPR commentator Devlin (The Language of Mathematics) has joined these two strands of popular science writing. Using up-to-date cognitive psychology, along with the history of math, Devlin aims to unfold our "innate sense of number" and to show what it has to do with language. He also hopes, more ambitiously, to win readers over to his own hypothesis about how our language and math "instincts" arose. Experiments show that chimps, like us, "use symbols to denote numbers," though human toddlers are far better at it. Combining a number sense with symbolic abilities, we use abstractions to manipulate quantities, leading to arithmetic and potentially to calculus and number theory. After several stellar chapters devoted largely to psychology experiments, Devlin switches gears to higher math, giving examples of how abstract models describe concrete things--from rotating clock faces to rattlesnake skins. The book takes another sharp turn, into the stimulating but quite crowded field of hypotheses about how our brains came to be. While responsibly laying out several hypotheses, Devlin favors the idea that enhanced symbolic abilities let early hominids think "off-line," asking and answering "what if" questions about tools, predators, habitats or prey. Some may wish Devlin had written two books--one about math and language, the other about language and evolution; the former would likely ace the latter. Most readers, though, will appreciate the broad, accessible syntheses he does provide. 35 illus. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This book is not about mathematics or genetics or why some people are good at math and others are not. Rather, Devlin (Goodbye, Descartes) asks and attempts to answer the question, "How and why did human beings evolve the ability to do mathematics?" His point is that mathematics is more than arithmetic. Real mathematics involves making logical arguments about abstract objects. Devlin briefly outlines Chomsky's theory that we are all born with "hard-wired" linguistic ability. He then explains that the mental process of making logical connections between abstract objects and the mental process needed to construct sentences have the identical structure. Thus, we can see that the genetic heritage that gives us all the ability to communicate by language also gives us the ability to do mathematics. I am convinced that Devlin is correct, and, if you read this book, you will be, too. For all math and science collections.--Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll. of CUNY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Booknews

Exploring connections between mathematics and language, science teacher and popularizer Devlin (language and communication, Stanford U.) discusses the inner workings of the brain, the beauty of mathematical systems, the theories of Noam Chomsky, and a number of illustrations of how mathematics is used daily. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)