Review: Calculus (Kline)

Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach by Morris Kline

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Morris Kline’s book, Mathematics for the Nonmathematician, is my favorite book on the discipline. Kline showed an amazing ability to explain mathematical concepts intuitively, and to situate them within a sensible human context. In his hands, math was not simply a series of equations or deductive proofs, but an integral aspect of our civilization: a crucial tool in our species’ attempt to understand and manipulate the world. The book changed my view of the subject.

So when I found that Kline had written a book on the calculus, I knew that I had to read it. Calculus represents the furthest I have ever gone with mathematics in my formal schooling. By the time that I graduated high school, I was a problem-solving machine—with so many rules of algebra, trigonometry, derivation, and integration memorized that I could breeze through simple exercises. Yet this was a merely mechanical understanding. I was like a well-trained dog, obeying orders without comprehension; and this was apparent whenever I had to do any problems that required deeper thinking.

In time I lost even this, leaving me feeling like any ordinary mathematical ignoramus. My remedial education has been slow and painful. This was my primary object in reading this book: to revive whatever atrophied mathematical skills lay dormant, and to at least recover the level of ability I had in high school. Kline’s text was perfect for this purpose. His educational philosophy suits me. Rather than explain the calculus using formal proofs, he first tries to shape the student’s intuition. He does this through a variety of examples, informal arguments, and graphic representation, allowing the learner to get a “feel” for the math before attempting a rigorous definition.

He justifies his procedure in the introduction:

Rigor undoubtedly refines the intuition but does not supplant it. . . . Before one can appreciate a precise formulation of a concept or theorem, he must know what idea is being formulated and what exceptions or pitfalls the wording is trying to avoid. Hence he must be able to call upon a wealth of experience acquired before tackling the rigorous formulation.

This rings true to my experience. In my first semester of university, when I thought that I was going to study chemistry, I took an introductory calculus course. It was divided into lectures with the professor and smaller “recitation” classes with a graduate student. In the lectures, the professor would inevitably take the class through long proofs, while the grad student would show us how to solve the problems in the recitatives. I inevitably found the professor’s proofs to be pointless, and soon decided to avoid them altogether, since they confused me rather than aided me. I got an A-minus in the class.

Though Kline forgoes the rigor one would expect in formal mathematics, this book is no breezy read. It is a proper textbook, designed to be used in a two-semester introductory course, complete with hundreds of exercises. And as fitting for such a purpose, this book is dry. Gone are the fascinating historical tidbits and gentle presentation of Kline’s book on popular mathematics. This book is meant for students of engineering and the sciences—students who need to know how to solve problems correctly, or planes will crash and buildings will collapse. But Kline is an excellent teacher in this context, too, and explains each concept clearly and concisely. It was often surprisingly easy to follow along.

The exercises are excellent as well, designed to progress in difficulty, and more importantly to encourage independent thinking. Rather than simply solving problems by rote, Kline encourages the student to apply the concepts creatively and in new contexts. Now, I admit that the sheer amount of exercises taxed my patience and interest. I wanted a refreshment, and Kline gave me a four-course meal. Still, I made sure to do at least a couple problems per section, to check whether I was actually understanding the basic idea. It helped immensely to have the solutions manual, which you can download from Dover’s website.

In the end, I am very glad to have read this book. Admittedly this tome did dominate my summer—as I plowed through its chapters for hours each day, trying to finish the book before the start of the next school year—and I undoubtedly tried to read it far too quickly. Yet even though I spent a huge portion of my time with this book scratching my head, getting questions wrong, it did help to restore a sense of intellectual confidence. Now I know for sure that I am still at least as smart as I was at age 18.

And the subject, if often tedious, is fascinating. Learning any branch of mathematics can be intensely satisfying. Each area interlocks with and builds upon the other, forming a marvelous theoretical edifice. And in the case of the calculus, this abstract structure contains the tools needed to analyze the concrete world—and that is the beauty of math.

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