And, here they are.
The Evolution of Useful Things. This was by Henry Petroski, may he rest in peace. I don’t know if I would call in fascinating, but it was an interesting look into how very simple things have been designed over the last couple of hundred years. Some of the examples included forks, paperclips, zippers, and more. He did circle back to forks in different parts of the book, so it seemed like he wandered in the topics sometimes. I may have skimmed or skipped some pages, since it was less than thrilling. But, I am looking forward to reading his book about — The Pencil.
Do Numbers Exist? A Debate about Abstract Objects. This was a philosophers pissing contest between Peter van Inwagen and William Lane Craig. I should have looked at the author list first, since I’ve known that William Lane Craig was a theistic apologist. They both brought up god even though I don’t see what god would have to do with the philosophy of whether numbers truly exist or not. They tried to get very deep into the philosophical weeds so that they could impress the readers with how much they know about how to use philosophical jargon over most people’s heads. In the end, I sided more with Peter van Inwagen, since he seemed to be of the mind that numbers actually exist. Most of the book was not really about numbers, but more about the existence of abstract objects in general. I liked the segment starting on page 211 about the concept — do chairs exist? It reminded me of the line by John Oliver — Do Owls exist? Are there hats?
I skimmed the vast majority of the book, but It did get me thinking about the existence of numbers. I think that the number pi exists. If there is an intelligent life form that has studied mathematics outside of our solar system, it also knows how to calculate pi, and it knows that it has an infinite number of digits (in whatever number base it uses). The fact that it is reproducible and exactly calculated in another part of the universe makes it exist. Also, why would god make a number such that it can’t know the last digit. It can’t know everything, since it can’t know every digit of pi. While a theologian might say that God knows the infinite, how does he or she know that god would know every digit of pi and e and all irrational numbers? Numbers just exist, and they were not created by a god. For some reason, these two debated about whether or not god created numbers. As uncreated things, they are still things. Hence, they exist.
