Beauty Very Short Introduction

Brazil is associated in many people's minds with conviviality, sensuality, and natural beauty. Yet the country behind these images and associations is something of an enigma. It is alternately praised as the "country of the future", a rising power ready to take its place at the top tables of global governance, or written off as a perennial disappointment, a country forever failing to reach its potential, mired in corruption, inequality, poverty, and violence. These oscillations between euphoria and despair obscure a country with its own unique trajectory through the 20th and 21st centuries.

Crystals have fascinated us for centuries with their beauty and symmetry, and have often been invested with magical powers. The use of X-ray diffraction, first pioneered in 1912 by father and son William and Lawrence Bragg, enabled us to probe the structure of molecules, and heralded the scientific study of crystals, leading to an understanding of their atomic arrangements at a fundamental level.

It is often claimed that the French invented cinema. Dominating the production and distribution of cinema until World War 1, when they were supplanted by Hollywood, the French cinema industry encompassed all genres, from popular entertainment to avant-garde practice. The French invented the "auteur" and the "cine-club"; they incubated criticism from the 1920s to our own day that is unrivalled; and they boast more film journals, fan magazines, TV shows, and festivals devoted to film than anywhere else.

Number theory is the branch of mathematics that is primarily concerned with the counting numbers. Of particular importance are the prime numbers, the 'building blocks' of our number system. The subject is an old one, dating back over two millennia to the ancient Greeks, and for many years has been studied for its intrinsic beauty and elegance, not least because several of its challenges are so easy to state that everyone can understand them, and yet no-one has ever been able to resolve them. But number theory has also recently become of great practical importance—in the area of cryptography, where the security of your credit card, and indeed of the nation's defence, depends on a result concerning prime numbers that dates back to the 18th century.

This Very Short Introduction provides an overview of the intriguing and provocative life and ideas of twentieth century French philosopher, mystic, and social activist Simone Weil. Weil was not a typical, systematic philosopher. Despite her short life, Weil's philosophy has much to offer us in our times of personal, communal, political, and environmental crises, both in the breath and poignancy of her philosophy, and the topics it covers.