Like Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, and David Berlinski’s A Tour of the Calculus, Euclid in the Rainforest combine the literary with the mathematical to explore logic—the one indispensable tool in man’s quest to understand the world. Underpinning both math and science is the foundation of every significant advancement in knowledge since the time of the ancient Greeks. Mazur artfully reveals the less-than-airtight nature of logic and the chaotic relationship between math and the real world through adventure stories and historical narratives populated with a rich and quirky cast of characters. Ultimately, Mazur argues, logical reasoning is not purely robotic, and it is a creative process guided by our intuitions and beliefs about the world at its most basic level.
