Book review: if you only read one book outside your normal area this year …

Abstract

In view of Stephen Hawking’s acknowledgement in A Brief History of Time (1988) of the warning from his publisher that, for every equation in the book, the readership would be halved, I am concerned that the title may dissuade many readers of International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (IRGEE) from exploring Dr Papadimitriou’s magnificent exposition of spatial complexity any further. My purpose in this review, is to persuade geographical and environmental educators, who presumably form the main readership of this journal, that even if they feel less than confident in their understanding of complex systems, and feel intimidated by any formula longer than E = MC2, they have much pleasure, excitement and understanding to gain – even if they accept the invitation of the author to leave much of the mathematics for later. In his Acknowledgements at the start of the book, Dr. Papadimitriou reveals a little of what appears to have led him to the Renaissance-like erudition that emerges throughout his writing. He refers to the influences of his grandfather “who first taught me arithmetic and how to love numbers long before I went to school”, his grandmother Filanthi (her name means “friend of flowers”), “who instructed me how to look for the hidden “flower” (the hidden good) in all “difficulties” (I now consider in retrospect that she meant “complexities”, his father “who first initiated me in the challenges of geometric (spatial) thinking” and his mother “for orienting me, time and again, towards the exploration of the mysteries of geographical space”. Dr Papadimitriou explains further that, although his mother was a classicist and historian, “she firmly believed that space is the ultimate ruler of our lives, ... and, “while she always prompted me to simplify the unnecessarily complex, she also taught me the aesthetic pleasures of complexifying the dullness of extreme simplicity”. Such insights into early influences on the author’s own thought processes go far to explain how this book can help us as readers, and more specifically educators, to re-imagine the scope and contribution of geography to our own thinking and how we may guide the spatial awareness of our students in the future. In his Preface, Dr Papadimitriou attempts to answer five key questions: