Customer Reviews

The Visual Mind II (Leonardo Books)

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This splendid book is a feast for the eye, mind, and spirit. It is a sequel to the 1993 book, The Visual Mind: Art and Mathematics, also edited by Michelle Emmer, an Italian professor of mathematics. It uses visual examples and thoughtful essays to explore the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics and art.

Here are some highlights of this fascinating collection: There are several articles on mathematically-themed sculptures that display unusual concavities, knots, interlacements, and Mobius-style twists, with detailed analyses by their creators. There is an essay relating Picasso's cubism to Einstein's Theory of Relativity; another uses computer simulation to generate approximations of Paul Klee's art; a third illustrates explains the importance of circle packings in Japanese art and culture. There is a beautifully- photographed description of architect Frank Gehry's computer-assisted development of models for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Also outstanding are essays on the depiction of mathematics and mathematicians in relatively recent movies and another on the role of beauty in the evolution of mathematical proofs.

My one complaint is that these articles are very uneven in terms of overall quality and accessibility by non-mathematicians; some are scholarly papers that require the knowledge of college-level mathematics.

This book is excellent; however Emmer's first book, mentioned above, is even better. It's out of print but well worth searching for.