New Books In Mathematics

An award-winning astrophysicist looks at how the understanding of uncertainty and randomness has led to breakthroughs in our knowledge of the cosmos All of us understand the world around us by constructing models, comparing them to observations, and drawing conclusions. Scientists create, test, and replace these models by applying the twinned concepts of probability and randomness. Exploring how this process has refined our knowledge of quantum mechanics and the birth of the universe, In The Random Universe: How Models and Probability Help Us Make Sense of the Cosmos (Yale UP, 2025) Andrew H. Jaffe offers a unique synthesis of the philosophy of epistemology, the mathematics of probability, and the science of cosmology. As Jaffe puts Enlightenment thinkers like David Hume in conversation with contemporary philosophers such as Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos and engages with scientists ranging from Isaac Newton and Galileo to Albert Einstein and Arthur Eddington, he uses Thomas Bayes's seminal studies of st