An Epic Search For Truth

As someone who has a rudimentary knowledge about mathematics, I have found the book to be an “easy read” as per the first few chapters. But as the story goes on, one will discover what really lies within this book. Intellectually and emotionally overwhelming, “A Certain Ambiguity” is a novel creating its own genre and hitting the reader deeply to his nerves; yet written in a light manner so the general public can understand.

The book was a work of fiction having a captivating plot that worked well with discussions of mathematics, skepticism, religion and philosophy. It starts with a nostalgic flashback of the young Ravi Kapoor delighting in play of numbers and logic together with his grandfather, Vijay Sahni, who is an Indian mathematician. Later after the death of his grandfather, he was accepted into the prestigious Stanford University in US and majoring in Economics. Instead of getting the right subjects for him to graduate on time, he suddenly takes on a class called “Thinking About Infinity” where he learns a lot more than he expected. He learns not just about analyzing infinity. Outside the class, he also discovered revelations regarding his grandfather’s past by the help of his friends and colleagues. These intertwined events alongside with odd collection of characters set up a philosophical examination of the nature of reality, faith and certainty in religion, mathematics and life.

Further, the novel poses a lot of mathematics and philosophy, including the combination of the two. While the story and characters are fictional, real mathematical proofs like the Pythagorean Theorem and Euclidian geometry were presented in an interesting way. The authors also attempt to bring in some of the history of mathematical certainty like entries from Pythagoras, Oresme, Cantor, etc. The novelists do note though that the inscriptions are merely fictional and explained on the history in a section of notes at the end of the book.

Though mixed up, the philosophical connections to mathematics were clearly developed and very agreeable. This book accomplishes a good job of justifying faith to people with rational and mathematical views of life. Should the novel change your view of life, but will make you some inquisitive thinking on crucial topics.

Overall, I loved this book and would highly recommend this masterpiece to everyone. Yes, this is purely fictional; but the authors have succeeded in presenting mathematics as a human endeavor and making the readers think hard on the metaphysical implications of basic math axioms. One couldn't ask more of such a delightful and informative read.