- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface to the Paperback Edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction: The Veil
- Chapter 2 How I Acquired Charisma
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">α</span> How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- Chapter 3 Not Merely Good, True, and Beautiful
- Chapter 4 Megaloprepeia
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">β</span> How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- bonus chapter 5 An Automorphic Reading of Thomas Pynchon’s <i>Against the Day</i> (Interrupted by Elliptical Reflections on <i>Mason & Dixon</i>)
- Chapter 6 Further Investigations of the Mind-Body Problem
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">β</span>.5 How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- Chapter 7 The Habit of Clinging to an Ultimate Ground<sup>1</sup>
- Chapter 8 The Science of Tricks
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">γ</span> How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- Chapter 9 A Mathematical Dream and Its Interpretation
- Chapter 10 No Apologies
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">δ</span> How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- Afterword The Veil of Maya
- Bibliography
- Index of Mathematicians
- Subject Index
No Apologies
No Apologies
- Chapter:
- (p.279) Chapter 10 No Apologies
- Source:
- Mathematics without Apologies
- Author(s):
Michael Harris
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
This chapter presents the author's reflections about G. H. Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology. Upon rereading Hardy's Apology to prepare for writing this chapter, he was appalled to see what a hearty dose of unapologetic elitism he had imbibed along with Hardy's mathematical idealism when he was fourteen years old. When it began to dawn on him that some of the assumptions he had been taking for granted deserved to be questioned, the reading was buried so deeply in his past that he could not trace these beliefs back to their source. But years later, upon returning to A Mathematician's Apology, there they were.
Keywords: mathematicians, excellence, G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface to the Paperback Edition
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction: The Veil
- Chapter 2 How I Acquired Charisma
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">α</span> How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- Chapter 3 Not Merely Good, True, and Beautiful
- Chapter 4 Megaloprepeia
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">β</span> How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- bonus chapter 5 An Automorphic Reading of Thomas Pynchon’s <i>Against the Day</i> (Interrupted by Elliptical Reflections on <i>Mason & Dixon</i>)
- Chapter 6 Further Investigations of the Mind-Body Problem
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">β</span>.5 How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- Chapter 7 The Habit of Clinging to an Ultimate Ground<sup>1</sup>
- Chapter 8 The Science of Tricks
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">γ</span> How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- Chapter 9 A Mathematical Dream and Its Interpretation
- Chapter 10 No Apologies
- Chapter <span xml:lang="ell">δ</span> How to Explain Number Theory at a Dinner Party
- Afterword The Veil of Maya
- Bibliography
- Index of Mathematicians
- Subject Index