《数学简史: 确定性的消失》是20世纪仅有的几位数学史大师莫里斯·克莱因被读者广为阅读的一本书, 其包含15个章节, 深刻探讨了数学领域中确定性概念的消失对数学发展的影响。传统的确定性数学理论假设所有变量可精确测量, 然而现实世界充满不确定因素。书中指出, 概率论、统计学以及混沌理论等新兴数学分支为我们理解和应对不确定性提供了新的思路和方法。此外, 贝叶斯统计学和信息论也被引入, 为处理不确定性问题提供了有力工具。作者强调, 尽管确定性数学在某些领域失效, 但它仍在其他领域中发挥着重要作用。因此, 确定性数学和概率统计等工具可以共同发展, 相互补充。这本书适合对数学感兴趣的读者, 也具有启发科学技术工作者和决策者更好地认识和应对不确定性挑战的重要意义。

A Brief History of Mathematics: The Disappearance of Certainty is a book widely read by Maurice Klein, one of only a few masters of the history of mathematics in the 20th century. It contains 15 chapters that profoundly explore the impact of the disappearance of the concept of certainty on the development of mathematics in the field of mathematics. Traditional deterministic mathematical theory assumes that all variables can be accurately measured, but the real world is full of uncertainties. The book points out that the emerging branches of mathematics, such as probability theory, statistics and chaos theory, provide us with new ideas and methods to understand and deal with uncertainty. In addition, Bayesian statistics and information theory have also been introduced to provide powerful tools for dealing with uncertainty. The authors emphasize that despite the failure of deterministic mathematics in some areas, it still plays an important role in others. As a result, tools such as deterministic mathematics and probability statistics can be developed together and complement each other. This book is suitable for readers interested in mathematics and is also of great importance to inspire scientific and technical workers and policymakers to better understand and cope with the challenge of uncertainty.