Stephen Abbott

How playwrights from Alfred Jarry and Samuel Beckett to Tom Stoppard and Simon McBurney brought the power of abstract mathematics to the human stage. The discovery of alternate geometries, paradoxes of the infinite, incompleteness, and chaos theory revealed that, despite its reputation for certainty, mathematical truth is not immutable, perfect, or even perfectible. Beginning in the last century, a handful...

How playwrights from Alfred Jarry and Samuel Beckett to Tom Stoppard and Simon McBurney brought the power of abstract mathematics to the human stage. The discovery of alternate geometries, paradoxes of the infinite, incompleteness, and chaos theory revealed that, despite its reputation for certainty, mathematical truth is not immutable, perfect, or even perfectible. Beginning in the last century, a handful...