The Best of All Possible Worlds
by Ivar Ekeland · first published 2006
2mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2019–2022first – last mentioned
100% recommend
Optimists believe this is the best of all possible worlds. And pessimists fear that might really be the case. But what "is" the best of all possible worlds? How do we define it? Is it the world that operates the most efficiently? Or the one in which most people are comfortable and content? Questions such as these have preoccupied philosophers and theologians for ages, but there was a time, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when scientists and mathematicians felt they could provide the answer. This book is their story. Ivar Ekeland here takes the reader on a journey through scien
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The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny by Ivar Ekeland, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/407320.The_Best_of_All_P... It is definitely not like Feynman's Lectures still one of the best books I've ever read.
on “Ask HN: Are there books for mathematics like Feynman's lectures on physics?” ↗Ivar Ekeland's The Best of All Possible Worlds > "Ivar Ekeland takes readers on a journey through scientific attempts to envision the best of all possible worlds. He begins with the French mathematician Maupertuis, whose least action principle [...]…
on “Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?” ↗