Blueprints : how mathematics shapes creativity /
Marcus Du Sautoy
- New York : Basic Books, 2025
- x, 372 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
Dramatis Personae Overture Blueprint One: The Primes Blueprint Two: The Circle Blueprint Three: The Fibonacci Numbers Blueprint Four: The Golden Ratio Blueprint Five: Fractals Blueprint Six: The Platonic Solids Blueprint Seven: Symmetry Blueprint Eight: Hyperbolic Geometry Blueprint Nine: Randomness Finale
When Shakespeare has the Three Witches cast Macbeth's lot, he uses something very weird to do it: not simply "eye of newt and toe of frog," but the number seven. And when Hamlet claims, "To be or not to be, that is the question," Shakespeare reaches for eleven. For Shakespeare, prime numbers were magical. And he is not alone. As Marcus du Sautoy showcases in Blueprints, creativity is inseparable from mathematics. The designs of Le Corbusier and Leonardo; the music of Glass, Bach, and Debussy; the wild visions of Dali, the choreography of Laban, the animation of Pixar--all are shot through with mathematics, from primes and fractals to the weirder worlds of Hamiltonian cycles and hyperbolic geometry. And Du Sautoy argues that the relationship runs both ways. Just as mathematics inspires new art, the artistic mindset is a necessity for discovering new mathematics.