Mathematics
An unlikely alliance: Drayton and Mackenzie, by Alexander Starritt, reviewed
Two university contemporaries with next to nothing in common find themselves working together to disrupt electricity generation with a scheme to turn tidal power into light
The problem with Pascal’s wager
Graham Tomlin focuses on the Catholic philosopher’s search for intellectual certainty, but the cosmic gamble’s serious flaws don’t get the attention they deserve
In search of Pico della Mirandola, the quintessential Renaissance Man
Though the scholar himself remains an enigma, his theories about language as a portal to the divine are explored in depth by Edward Wilson-Lee
We are all people of faith, whether we realise it or not
Reason, narrowly framed, will never reveal the world to us. A better path involves reason harnessed to our ethical and aesthetic impulses, argues Alister McGrath
Versailles’s role as a palace of science
The vast seat of Bourbon power also doubled as a laboratory for experiments in astronomy, hydraulics, engineering, ballooning, medicine, mathematics and cartography
Will the toughest problem in maths ever be solved?
For many, not just mathematicians, the Riemann hypothesis is the very definition of a supremely difficult problem that might be…
Those magnificent men and their stargazing machines
Violet Moller focuses on three 16th-century‘heroes of science’, John Dee, Nicolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, and their great libraries and observatories
Bayes’s Theorem: the mathematical formula that ‘explains the world’
An obscure 18th-century Presbyterian minister’s insights into statistics are still valued today in making strategic economic decisions and forecasts
All to play for
Board games especially – dating back to at least 3000 BC – have never been idle entertainment but help boost the memory and teach valuable strategic skills
Why is Durham trying to ‘decolonise’ maths?
Is maths racist? That’s the question apparently troubling the department of mathematical sciences at Durham University at the moment. As…
Otherworldly genius
The 20th-century Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel did his level best to live in the world as his philosophical hero Gottfried…
Matters of fact
What is truth? You can speak of moral truths and aesthetic truths but I’m not concerned with those here, important…
Time immemorial
Some books elucidate their subject, mapping and sharpening its boundaries. The Clock Mirage, by the mathematician Joseph Mazur, is not…
Sadness and scandal
In 1886 the British mathematician and schoolmaster Charles Howard Hinton presented himself to the police at Bow Street, London to…
My only home-schooling success
‘What is the point of learning maths? When do you ever actually need it? How does it ever affect your…
The young Descartes: I fought, therefore I thought
Descartes is most generally known these days for being the guy who was sure he existed because he was thinking.…
Things we don’t mind paying for
Here’s a challenge for film buffs: can anyone remember, from the entire canon of cinema and television, a single scene…
In the sky with diamonds
The beliefs of physicists are infinitely kookier than anything in the Bible, says Alexander Masters
The Spectator’s Notes
As someone who has rarely written a sentence in praise of the late Sir Edward Heath, I hope I can…
Was Keats right after all?
Mediterranean crockery has a lot to answer for. It famously spoke thus to John Keats: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,…
The Spectator’s notes
Even if everything goes wronger still, the Greek No vote is a great victory for the left. Until now, the…
Time trials
The European philosophical tradition, Alfred North Whitehead claimed, consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. If you really want…
Maths and masterpieces
The Indian inspiration with which Piero della Francesca created ‘the greatest picture in the world’
How to give yourself a better chance
During the O.J. Simpson trial, the prosecution made much of the fact that Simpson had a record of violence towards…
