'This novel is essence of Banville ... a career summation' Daily Telegraph Felix Mordaunt, recently released from prison, steps from a flashy red sports car onto the estate of his youth. But there is a new family living in the drafty old house: descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley. Felix must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, with their harried housekeeper who becomes his landlady, with the recently commissioned biographer of Godley Sr., and with a wealthy and beautiful woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request...
From the revered Booker Prize-winning author comes a playful, multilayered novel of nostalgia, life and death, and quantum theory, which opens with the return of one of his most celebrated characters as he is released from prison. “A triumphant piece of writing…Prose of such luscious elegance…Exhilarating.” —The New York Times Book Review A man with a borrowed name steps from a flashy red sports car—also borrowed—onto the estate of his youth. But all is not as it seems. There is a new family living in the drafty old house: the Godleys, descendants of the late, world-famous scientist Adam Godley, whose theory of existence threw the universe into chaos. And this mystery man, who has just completed a prison sentence, feels as if time has stopped, or was torn, or was opened in new and strange ways. He must now vie with the idiosyncratic Godley family, with their harried housekeeper who becomes his landlady, with the recently commissioned biographer of Godley Sr., and with a wealthy and beautiful woman from his past who comes bearing an unusual request. With sparkling intelligence and rapier wit, John Banville revisits some of his career’s most memorable figures, in a novel as mischievous as it is brilliantly conceived. The Singularities occupies a singular space and will surely be one of his most admired works.
ESSAYS Collection The singularities from the general relativity resulting by solving Einstein's equations were and still are the subject of many scientific debates: Are there singularities in spacetime, or not? Big Bang was an initial singularity? If singularities exist, what is their ontology? Is the general theory of relativity a theory that has shown its limits in this case? In this essay I argue that there are singularities, and the general theory of relativity, as any other scientific theory at present, is not valid for singularities. But that does not mean, as some scientists think, that it must be regarded as being obsolete. After a brief presentation of the specific aspects of Newtonian classical theory and the special theory of relativity, and a brief presentation of the general theory of relativity, the chapter Ontology of General Relativity presents the ontological aspects of general relativity. The next chapter, Singularities, is dedicated to the presentation of the singularities resulting in general relativity, the specific aspects of the black holes and the event horizon, including the Big Bang debate as original singularity, and arguments for the existence of the singularities. In Singularity Ontology, I am talking about the possibilities of ontological framing of singularities in general and black holes in particular, about the hole argument highlighted by Einstein, and the arguments presented by scientists that there are no singularities and therefore that the general theory of relativity is in deadlock. In Conclusions I outline and summarize briefly the arguments that support my above views. CONTENTS Abstract Introduction Classical Theory and Special Relativity General Relativity (GR) 1 Ontology of General Relativity 2 Singularities Black Holes Event Horizon Big Bang Are there Singularities? 3 Ontology of Singularities Ontology of black holes The hole argument There are no singularities Conclusions Notes Bibliography
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil, hailed by Bill Gates as “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence,” presents an “elaborate, smart, and persuasive” (The Boston Globe) view of the future course of human development. “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.”—Los Angeles Times “Startling in scope and bravado.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times “An important book.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity. While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, The Singularity Is Near presents a radical and optimistic view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.
The notion of singularity is basic to mathematics. In algebraic geometry, the resolution of singularities by simple algebraic mappings is truly a fundamental problem. It has a complete solution in characteristic zero and partial solutions in arbitrary characteristic. The resolution of singularities in characteristic zero is a key result used in many subjects besides algebraic geometry, such as differential equations, dynamical systems, number theory, the theory of $\mathcal{D}$-modules, topology, and mathematical physics. This book is a rigorous, but instructional, look at resolutions. A simplified proof, based on canonical resolutions, is given for characteristic zero. There are several proofs given for resolution of curves and surfaces in characteristic zero and arbitrary characteristic. Besides explaining the tools needed for understanding resolutions, Cutkosky explains the history and ideas, providing valuable insight and intuition for the novice (or expert). There are many examples and exercises throughout the text. The book is suitable for a second course on an exciting topic in algebraic geometry. A core course on resolutions is contained in Chapters 2 through 6. Additional topics are covered in the final chapters. The prerequisite is a course covering the basic notions of schemes and sheaves.
This book is an introduction to singularities for graduate students and researchers. Algebraic geometry is said to have originated in the seventeenth century with the famous work Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences by Descartes. In that book he introduced coordinates to the study of geometry. After its publication, research on algebraic varieties developed steadily. Many beautiful results emerged in mathematicians’ works. First, mostly non-singular varieties were studied. In the past three decades, however, it has become clear that singularities are necessary for us to have a good description of the framework of varieties. For example, it is impossible to formulate minimal model theory for higher-dimensional cases without singularities. A remarkable fact is that the study of singularities is developing and people are beginning to see that singularities are interesting and can be handled by human beings. This book is a handy introduction to singularities for anyone interested in singularities. The focus is on an isolated singularity in an algebraic variety. After preparation of varieties, sheaves, and homological algebra, some known results about 2-dimensional isolated singularities are introduced. Then a classification of higher-dimensional isolated singularities is shown according to plurigenera and the behavior of singularities under a deformation is studied. In the second edition, brief descriptions about recent remarkable developments of the researches are added as the last chapter.
Since the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord, signaling the beginning of open war between the colonies and England, America has been credited with a singular conviction, a concern for military veterans' and others' economic and political rights. The idea of America as a promised land of economic opportunity, social mobility, and political freedom has not always flourished. Historians have both given it reality and shaken its substance as they exposed an undercurrent of greed, class conflict, and corruption. In this book Harold Hyman explores the question of American singularity, using the Northwest Ordinance, the Homestead and Morrill acts, and the G.I Bill to measure individual access to land, education, and law. The Northwest Ordinance, enacted in 1787 to encourage settlement of the nation's untamed territories, mandated the establishment of public schools and stable property rights in newly settled lands--specific terms which enshrined the basic liberties secured by the Revolutionary War. Hyman shows that through the Homestead and Morrill acts of 1862, legislators sought to preserve the values of the Union and to prepare for the entrance of the black man into citizenship. Equal access to public lands in the West and to state land-grant universities, countered the economic and social injustices blacks and poor whites would face after the Civil War. Finally, Hyman asserts that the G.I. Bill preserved beneficial social programs forged during the depression, carrying into post-World War II America a widespread concern for education and housing opportunities. Examining the legislation that emerged from three periods of conflict in American history, Hyman reveals a consistent pattern favoring equal access to land, education, and law--a progression of singular, if sometimes flawed, attempts to embody in our statutes the values and aspirations that sparked our major wars.
Singularity theory appears in numerous branches of mathematics, as well as in many emerging areas such as robotics, control theory, imaging, and various evolving areas in physics. The purpose of this proceedings volume is to cover recent developments in singularity theory and to introduce young researchers from developing countries to singularities in geometry and topology.The contributions discuss singularities in both complex and real geometry. As such, they provide a natural continuation of the previous school on singularities held at ICTP (1991), which is recognized as having had a major influence in the field.
