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When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish and Other Speculations About This and That
Best known as the longtime writer of the Mathematical Games column for Scientific American—which introduced generations of readers to the joys of recreational mathematics—Martin Gardner has for decades pursued a parallel career as a devastatingly effective debunker of what he once famously dubbed “fads and fallacies in the name of science.” It is mainly in this latter role...more
Hardcover, 256 pages
Published
October 13th 2009
by Hill and Wang
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When I was a kid I used to go visit my Granny's place and she always had a massive stack of Scientific American magazines. Granny, who was a brilliant mathematician, and I would spend time together playing cards (to learn about probability) and reading Martin Gardner's columns on maths, games and logic.
Since having grown up I still retain a love for Mr gardner's mind. Now he's 94, and still publishing from his assisted care facility, and now he writes like a cranky old man, which is just perfe...more
Since having grown up I still retain a love for Mr gardner's mind. Now he's 94, and still publishing from his assisted care facility, and now he writes like a cranky old man, which is just perfe...more
"Speculations About This and That" is an appropriate subtitle for this book. It contains essays on topics as seemingly diverse as Ann Coulter, The Wizard of Oz, Fibonacci numbers, Santa Claus, the Titanic, and socialism.
I found some of the essays interesting, some boring, some thought-provoking, and some over my head. Many of the essays were actually prefaces to other books. Most were on topics about which I would probably not read an entire book, but one essay did inspire ...more
I found some of the essays interesting, some boring, some thought-provoking, and some over my head. Many of the essays were actually prefaces to other books. Most were on topics about which I would probably not read an entire book, but one essay did inspire ...more
A collection of essays, mostly forwards from other books, but also some book reviews, by Gardner. I enjoyed the pieces on Chesterton, who I haven't read, and L. Frank Baum. Also fascinating is Gardner's defense of "fideism" (basically, Gardner's faith in a God and afterlife) based, at least in part, on Pascal's Wager. Worth reading.
He's always good company and I admit that I skimmed the mathematical bits. He includes the "Why I am not an atheist" essay and I'm not sure why. It is a consummate argument for the value of delusional thought and its value for getting through life, but he really doesn't score any points for theism, god or any of that other stuff.
I love MG, and I like what he's writing, but this felt like a bunch of well-written preaching to the choir. It's fun if you're in his corner, but I found less enlightenment and insight than in some of his other books.
Good, not great. Mostly this is a collection of things scraped up from random sources, for example prefaces that Martin Gardner wrote for other books.
I just couldn't get into it. The author sounded like an angry old man.
Some interesting essays. Could have done without the religious stuff.
I enjoyed getting to read what was going on in this great mathematician's head.
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Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981, and published over 70 books.
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