From preeminent math personality and author of The Joy of x, a brilliant and endlessly appealing explanation of calculus – how it works and why it makes our lives immeasurably better.
Without calculus, we wouldn’t have cell phones, TV, GPS, or ultrasound. We wouldn’t have unraveled DNA or discovered Neptune or figured out how to put 5,000 songs in your pocket.
Though many of us were scared away from this essential, engrossing subject in high school and college, Steven Strogatz’s brilliantly creative, down‑to‑earth history shows that calculus is not about complexity; it’s about simplicity. It harnesses an unreal number—infinity—to tackle real‑world problems, breaking them down into easier ones and then reassembling the answers into solutions that feel miraculous.
Infinite Powers recounts how calculus tantalized and thrilled its inventors, starting with its first glimmers in ancient Greece and bringing us right up to the discovery of gravitational waves (a phenomenon predicted by calculus). Strogatz reveals how this form of math rose to the challenges of each age: how to determine the area of a circle with only sand and a stick; how to explain why Mars goes “backwards” sometimes; how to make electricity with magnets; how to ensure your rocket doesn’t miss the moon; how to turn the tide in the fight against AIDS.
As Strogatz proves, calculus is truly the language of the universe. By unveiling the principles of that language, Infinite Powers makes us marvel at the world anew.

阿基米德（Archimedes 约公元前287～前212年）是古希腊著名的数学家和物理学家。后人对他给予极高的评价，常把他和牛顿、高斯并列为有史以来三个贡献最大的数学家。阿基米德在继承前人数学成就的基础上，作了进一步完善和发展，他给出了“阿基米德公理”，使与极限关命题证明的“穷竭法”更加严密，并且运用自如，最后完成了圆面积，球表面积以及球体积的证明。阿基米德在对古希腊三个著名的问题的深入探索中引出了诸多的发现，并且在数学的各个方面作出了开创性的工作。他研究了与螺线、热物线和圆锥曲线旋转体有关的命题，同时在三次方程和算术方面都有贡献。阿基米德的著作是数学阐述的典范，写得完整，简练，显示出巨大的创造性，计算技能和证明的严谨性。他的每一篇论文都为教学知识宝库做出了崭新的贡献。本书收集了已发现的阿基米德著作，它对于了解古希腊数学，研究古希腊数学思想以及整个科技史都是十分宝贵的。