What Is Mathematics? Expectations" by Charles Dickens. According to Constance Reid, Courant finalized the title after a conversation with Thomas Mann. What Is Mathematics? What Is Mathematics? is a mathematics book written by Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins, published in England by Oxford University Press. It is an introduction to mathematics, intended both for the mathematics student and for the general public. First published in 1941, it discusses number theory, geometry, topology and calculus. A second edition was published in 1996 with an additional chapter on recent progress in mathematics, written by Ian Stewart. The book was based on Courant's course material. Although
What Is History? just-the-facts approach would resemble a character named Funes in a short story by Jorge Luis Borges who never forgot anything he had seen or heard, so his memory was a "garbage heap". Thus, Funes was "not very capable of thought" because "to think is forget differences, to generalize, to make abstractions". In his introduction to the second edition of "What is History?" written shortly before his death in 1982, which was all that Carr had finished of the second edition, Carr proclaimed his belief that the western world was in a state of despair, writing: "The Cold War has resumed