Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery by Imre Lakatos
The flow is a mental state in which you are totally immersed in what you are doing. It’s been a long time since I got into the flow while reading a book, but this book did it for me. Written as a socratic dialogue it is a discussion between a teacher and many students who work on proving Euler’s polyhedron formula. The great thing about this book is that the proof (really plural proofs) here are easily comprehensible to someone with only a small mathematical background, but the way in which the story unfolds is both dramatic and insightful. Or at least it was for me.
The best book I’ve read in a few years, I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in how mathematics and mathematicians work, and in general to anyone who wonders about how discovery and newness appear in the world.
I’d give you mine, but Imma dog ate it (apparently she had some disagreements with Gamma):
