A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel by Gaurav Suri
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

So Many Stories; So Little Point

A Certain Ambiguity is appropriately titled; it is highly ambiguous in both form and content. It starts as a Bildungsroman of a Stanford University student from India, fades into an Historical Mystery about the student’s mathematician grandfather, lapses occasionally into a rather unromantic Romance, and ends up commenting on the conflicting duties toward self, family and humanity. A substantial portion of the book is concerned with the axiomatic method as applied in mathematics, and a comparison of this method with that of religious faith. It also provides extended tutorials on the rigours of geometry and the mathematics of infinity.

So if you are interested in why Euclid’s fifth postulate is like Cantor’s Continuum Hypothesis, this may be your thing. If not, it doesn’t have the necessary literary qualities to justify either its price or the investment in reading-time. Its observations are trivial where they are not tedious. Its suggestions - particularly about the similarity of religious faith and mathematical commitment - are not only wrong, they are dangerously stupid (See here for a refutation of the contention that scientific and religious faith are analogous: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). Page after page of mathematical proofs and faux correspondence by philosophers ancient and modern constitute a travesty of narrative story-telling.

At one point the protagonist has an epiphany: “Maybe it’s because mathematics is not a spectator sport. You have to do it to appreciate it.” Perhaps this insight is worthwhile. Of course it also obviates the point of the book: An axiomatic contradiction which should have prevented its publication. If you have an interest in literary mathematics, I suggest a far superior alternative: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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