Amir Alexander has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Infinitesimal.
Infinitesimal
Summary
Pulsing with drama and excitement, Infinitesimal celebrates the spirit of discovery, innovation, and intellectual achievement - and it will forever change the way you look at a simple line. On August 10, 1632, five men in flowing black robes convened in a somber Roman palazzo to pass judgment on a deceptively simple proposition: that a continuous line is composed of distinct and infinitely tiny parts. With the stroke of a pen the Jesuit fathers banned the doctrine of infinitesimals, announcing that it could never be taught or even mentioned. The concept was deemed dangerous and subversive, a threat to the belief that the world was an orderly place, governed by a strict and unchanging set of rules. If infinitesimals were ever accepted, the Jesuits feared, the entire world would be plunged into chaos. In Infinitesimal, the award-winning historian Amir Alexander exposes the deep-seated reasons behind the rulings of the Jesuits and shows how the doctrine persisted, becoming the foundation of calculus and much of modern mathematics and technology. Indeed, not everyone agreed with the Jesuits. Philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians across Europe embraced infinitesimals as the key to scientific progress, freedom of thought, and a more tolerant society. As Alexander reveals, it wasn’t long before the two camps set off on a war that pitted Europe’s forces of hierarchy and order against those of pluralism and change. The story takes us from the bloody battlefields of Europe’s religious wars and the English Civil War and into the lives of the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of the day, including Galileo and Isaac Newton, Cardinal Bellarmine and Thomas Hobbes, and Christopher Clavius and John Wallis. In Italy, the defeat of the infinitely small signaled an end to that land’s reign as the cultural heart of Europe, and in England, the triumph of infinitesimals helped launch the island nation on a course that would make it the world’s first modern state. From the imperial cities of Germany to the green hills of Surrey, from the papal palace in Rome to the halls of the Royal Society of London, Alexander demonstrates how a disagreement over a mathematical concept became a contest over the heavens and the Earth. The legitimacy of popes and kings, as well as our beliefs in human liberty and progressive science, were at stake - the soul of the modern world hinged on the infinitesimal.
©2014 Amir Alexander (P)2014 Audible Inc.
Proof!
Summary
An eye-opening narrative of how geometric principles fundamentally shaped our world
One night in 1661, Nicholas Fouquet, a superintendent under Louis XIV, was arrested. His crime was peculiar: He had dared to construct a grand geometrical garden. In doing so, he violated an irrefutable hierarchy: that geometry, in its perfection, was a testament to divine right. The elegant, symmetrical designs were more than just ornament; they were proofs of incontestable certainty, and thus the authority to rule. But how did the French royalty fall in love with this peculiar landscape design? Wherefore Versailles?
In Proof!, the award-winning historian Amir Alexander argues that Euclidean geometry has been uniquely responsible for how our societies are structured. It has shaped how our cities are built and been used as a rationale to explain political structures. The proofs in Euclid's Elements were not only just true, but were certain by reason alone. Alexander tracks the rediscovery of Euclidean geometry in 15th-century Italy and recounts the French royalty's centuries-long love affair with geometrical gardening, which acted as a visual symbol of the king's consolidation of power during a time of violence and upheaval, and which culminated with the gardens at Versailles. Proof! tells the monumental story of the geometries that were carved into our world, the beliefs they supported, and the ways they shape our lives to this day.
©2019 Amir Alexander (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing