Euclid In The Rainforest: Discovering Universal Truth in Logic and Math

This work talks about the logic of nature and the nature of logic. Like Douglas Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach, and David Berlinski’s A Tour of the Calculus , Euclid in the Rainforest combines the literary with the mathematical to explore logic - the one indispensable tool in man’s quest to understand the world. Through adventure stories and historical narratives populated with a rich and quirky cast of characters, Mazur artfully reveals the less-than-airtight nature of logic and the muddled relationship between maths and the real world. Ultimately, Mazur argues, logical reasoning is not purely robotic. At its most basic level, it is a creative process guided by our intuitions and beliefs about the world.