Uncertainty - (Studies in Mathematics in the Arts and Humanities) by Yair Neuman (Hardcover)

About the Book

The experience of uncertainty as reflected in literature and its religious aspect.

Book Synopsis

In a scientifically oriented world, our understanding of uncertainty is almost exclusively mediated by probabilistic ideas, whether naïvely understood or theoretically grounded. However, there is one context where the scientific idea of probability is notable by its absence: our experience of uncertainty as individuals from a first-person perspective, from within. Here, fiction as "the science of the particular" may help by exposing the phenomenology of uncertainty. In this book, Prof. Neuman studies experiences of uncertainty as reflected and expressed in fiction. Although a common saying is that God does not play dice (with the universe), it will be shown that God's presence and absence both repeatedly accompany the experience of uncertainty. This book, critical and interdisciplinary, is imbued with irony and humor, and contains profound reflections that will give the reader a fresh perspective on the feelings we experience when facing the abyss of ignorance.

About the Author

Yair Neuman, Ph.D. (1968), is a full Professor at BGU. He has published numerous papers in top tier journals ranging from science to psychoanalysis and semiotics. He is the author of 14 books to include Conceptual Mathematics and Literature (Brill, 2020).