"In this thought-provoking reading adventure, acclaimed author A.K. Dewdney takes us on a fictional journey around the world in search of the solution to one of the greatest ancient mysteries of mathematics." "From the Temple of Apollo to the Arabian desert, and from the winding canals of Venice to the medieval halls of Oxford, Dewdney searches through highlights in the history of mathematics for an answer to the timeless question: Why is it that the cosmos - from the tiny world of atoms to the shape of the universe itself - is so miraculously governed by mathematical laws? Could it be that our world is in some sense made of mathematics, as Pythagoras famously proposed? Or is it we (or the mathematicians among us) who make mathematics? Are the remarkable theorems and equations that describe the world around us discovered, or are they created? Is mathematics the very fabric of the cosmos, or does it exist only in the human mind?"--Jacket.