Book review of A Brief History of Mathematics: The Disappearance of Certainty

Abstract

A Brief History of Mathematics: The Disappearance of Certainty is a book widely read by Maurice Klein, one of only a few masters of the history of mathematics in the 20th century. It contains 15 chapters that profoundly explore the impact of the disappearance of the concept of certainty on the development of mathematics in the field of mathematics. Traditional deterministic mathematical theory assumes that all variables can be accurately measured, but the real world is full of uncertainties. The book points out that the emerging branches of mathematics, such as probability theory, statistics and chaos theory, provide us with new ideas and methods to understand and deal with uncertainty. In addition, Bayesian statistics and information theory have also been introduced to provide powerful tools for dealing with uncertainty. The authors emphasize that despite the failure of deterministic mathematics in some areas, it still plays an important role in others. As a result, tools such as deterministic mathematics and probability statistics can be developed together and complement each other. This book is suitable for readers interested in mathematics and is also of great importance to inspire scientific and technical workers and policymakers to better understand and cope with the challenge of uncertainty.