A Certain Ambiguity – Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal

Ever wondered if there is any connection between mathematics and God? What if I say, the existence of God can be proved or disproved mathematically? The book ‘A Certain Ambiguity’ explores something similar.

The book follows the life of an Indian mathematician and tries to draw parallels between maths and faith and life, in general. While the story and the characters are fictional, the intriguing mathematical proofs are as real as you and I are. The famous Pythagorean theorem, the Euclidean geometry find a place in this book. What occupies the most part of the book is infinity. I had never thought of infinity in terms of an infinity being bigger or smaller than another infinity. The book taught me a lot about infinity and maths in general, which I didn’t know. Was I sleeping through my math class when my teacher covered these?

When I picked up this book, I never expected it to be a page-tuner. For the readers who have forgotten basic math, the authors have thankfully included an introduction to all basic concepts wherever necessary. Anybody having any inclination towards mathematics will love this book. The proofs are beautiful. Even for those who hated maths in school, that non-mathematical part of the book will be interesting. Characters, story, style of writing don’t matter, atleast didn’t matter to me. The very question of ‘Can you prove or disprove mathematically that God exists?’ is intriguing enough for anybody to pick up the book, what say?

Does the book answer that question? Well, that is for you to find out. It might not give you a page of equations which leads to the proof, but it does answer in some way. Only if you think so. You will know what I mean when you read the book.

This book reminds me of another book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, in which the author apparently proves that God does not exist. Has anyone read that book?