Change is the Only Constant

If Taleb convinced me that Mathematics was beautiful philosophy, Ben Orlin is the one made me fall in love with it.
Change is the Only Constant is beautiful and funny at the same time.

It’s the story of Calculus over the ages and through domains.
It weaves through life and time, through people, interesting and otherwise.
And the way Ben tells it, it bears no resemblance to the dry crap that is taught in schools and colleges.
It’s beautiful and wonderful, but not paramount and still subject to the vagaries and complexities of life and nature.

In their more insufferable moods, the “hard” sciences like to boast and crow, as if “hard” means complicated and “soft” means simple. This is, of course, exactly backward. The softer the science, the more complex its phenomena.
Physicists can predict what atoms will do. But gather enought atoms, and the calculations grow unwieldy. We need new, emergent laws—chemical laws. Then, gather enought chemicals, and complexity overwhelms us again. We need biology to step in with new theories and rules. And so on down the line. At each tipping point, the role of math evolves: from certain to tentative, from deterministic to statistical, from consensus to controversy. Simple phenomena (like quarks) follow mathematical rules with slavish fidelity. Complex phenomena (like toddlers) less so.

Loved it!