Blueprints : How mathematics shapes creativity
Picked out by the Financial Times as essential reading for 2025, this book tackles a question that sounds almost provocative: what if mathematics and creativity are not opposites at all, but quiet collaborators? Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford's Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and a celebrated mathematician, makes a compelling case that the two have been intertwined for centuries, whether artists knew it or not. Many never noticed the numerical logic humming beneath their work. Others sought it out deliberately. Either way, it was always there. Du Sautoy ranges widely and confidently across his subject. He takes readers from ancient stone circles to Le Corbusier's austere architecture, from the geometric precision of Bach to the gloriously unruly soundscapes of Radiohead, and from the curious numerical patterns buried in Shakespeare's writing to the Dada movement's love affair with pure chance. What emerges is not a clash between two opposing disciplines, but something far more interesting: a long, largely unacknowledged kinship. The mathematics in question is richly varied. Prime numbers, symmetry, and fractals sit alongside more unusual concepts such as Hamiltonian cycles and hyperbolic geometry, all of which, it turns out, nature itself uses freely. The natural world, du Sautoy argues, has always been working from the same set of blueprints. The book also turns the argument around rather neatly, showing why creative thinking is not just welcome in mathematics but genuinely necessary for it. As Hans Ulrich Obrist of the Serpentine Galleries puts it, the book demonstrates that meeting the big challenges ahead requires pooling knowledge, not guarding it. It's a generous, thought-provoking read.
- Author: Marcus du Sautoy
- Publisher: Fourth Estate
- Genre: Design & Fashion
- ISBN: 978-0008750503
- Pages: 304 pages