For a recent review in SIAM News, the news journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Ernest Davis discusses Seeing Foucault’s Pendulum:Between Science, Politics, and Art by Michael Hagner. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to read the full review. An excerpt appears below:

“Michael Hagner, a distinguished historian of science at ETH Zürich, was invited to write a brief historical essay contextualizing this artwork. His essay turned into Seeing Foucault’s Pendulum: Between Science, Politics, and Art, a 300-page book originally published in German in 2021 but later translated by Robert Savage and published in English in 2025. Despite the book’s subtitle, however, there is not much about politics in the narrow sense, and even less about science. In particular, there is no explanation of the fact that the rotational period of the pendulum is 24 hours divided by the sine of its latitude. Likewise, descriptions and explanations of devices similar to Foucault’s pendulum are often left frustratingly unclear. Overall, however, the book is remarkable and mind-expanding, combining the histories of science, culture, and iconography.”