Mathematics' need for narrative

I had lunch today at a (relatively) new local bookstore, Ada's (and yes, that's in Lovelace) just a couple of doors down from the place at which I often meet Eileen Gunn for writing dates. I can recommend the food. But more to the point, because the audience for the books they sell is strictly geeky, their selection is unusual. (One entire room is devoted to computer programming.) Happily, my browsing unearthed a big fat Princeton University Press hardcover with the title of Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative. With one look at the table of contents, I knew there was no way I was going to allow that book to languish on the shelf, bereft of my most personal attention, even if an electronic edition would likely be more reasonably priced and take no space on my own bookshelves. The book isn't a monograph, but a collection of articles, edited by Apostolos Doxiadis (a writer) and Barry Mazur (a mathematician). Tom, looking over my shoulder, spotted the name of a geometer in the ToC. ("Just wanted to be sure that geometry got some representation in this book.") The cover image, appropriately enough, is of Archimedes wielding a compass while a Roman soldier has grabbed him by the left arm and has raised his sword, ready to plunge it into the geometer.

Here's the description of the book on the publisher's page:

Circles Disturbed brings together important thinkers in mathematics, history, and philosophy to explore the relationship between mathematics and narrative. The book's title recalls the last words of the great Greek mathematician Archimedes before he was slain by a Roman soldier--"Don't disturb my circles"--words that seem to refer to two radically different concerns: that of the practical person living in the concrete world of reality, and that of the theoretician lost in a world of abstraction. Stories and theorems are, in a sense, the natural languages of these two worlds--stories representing the way we act and interact, and theorems giving us pure thought, distilled from the hustle and bustle of reality. Yet, though the voices of stories and theorems seem totally different, they share profound connections and similarities.

A book unlike any other, Circles Disturbed delves into topics such as the way in which historical and biographical narratives shape our understanding of mathematics and mathematicians, the development of "myths of origins" in mathematics, the structure and importance of mathematical dreams, the role of storytelling in the formation of mathematical intuitions, the ways mathematics helps us organize the way we think about narrative structure, and much more.


"Circles Disturbed offers a range of possibilities for how narrative can function in mathematics and how narratives themselves show signs of a mathematical structure. An intelligent, exploratory collection of writings by a distinguished group of contributors."--Theodore Porter, University of California, Los Angeles
"This collection is a pioneering effort to trace the hidden connections between mathematics and narrative. It succeeds magnificently, and represents a very significant contribution that will appeal to the professional mathematician as well as the general educated reader. The articles are written by top authorities in their fields."--Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers University

The publisher is offering a pdf of the introduction: here. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i9764.pdf.


And here's the Table of Contents:

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction vii
Chapter 1: From Voyagers to Martyrs: Toward a Storied History of Mathematics 1
By AMIR ALEXANDER
Chapter 2 Structure of Crystal, Bucket of Dust 52
By PETER GALISON
Chapter 3: Deductive Narrative and the Epistemological Function of Belief in Mathematics: On Bombelli and Imaginary Numbers 79
By FEDERICA LANAVE
Chapater 4: Hilbert on Theology and Its Discontents: The Origin Myth of Modern Mathematics 105
By COLIN MCLARTY
Chapter 5: Do Androids Prove Theorems in Their Sleep? 130
By MICHAEL HARRIS
Chapter 6: Visions, Dreams, and Mathematics 183
By BARRY MAZUR
Chapter 7: Vividness in Mathematics and Narrative 211
By TIMOTHY GOWERS
Chapter 8: Mathematics and Narrative: Why Are Stories and Proofs Interesting? 232
By BERNARD TEISSIER
Chapter 9: Narrative and the Rationality of Mathematical Practice 244
By DAVID CORFIELD
Chapter 10: A Streetcar Named (among Other Things) Proof: From Storytelling to Geometry, via Poetry and Rhetoric 281
By APOSTOLOS DOXIADIS
Chapter 11: Mathematics and Narrative: An Aristotelian Perspective 389
By G .E .R . LLOYD
Chapter 12: Adventures of the Diagonal: Non-Euclidean Mathematics and Narrative 407
By ARADY PLOTNITSKY
Chapter 13: Formal Models in Narrative Analysis 447
By DAVID HERMAN
Chapter 14: Mathematics and Narrative: A Narratological Perspective 481
By URI MARGOL N
Chapter 15: Tales of Contingency, Contingencies of Telling: Toward an Algorithm of Narrative Subjectivity 508
By JAN CHRISTOPH MEISTER

Anyway, I suspect some readers of this blog will find this as promising and interesting as I do.