Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Godel FROM THE PUBLISHER
This definitive biography of the logician and philosopher Kurt Godel is the first in-depth account to integrate details of his personal life with his work and is based on the author's intensive study of Godel's papers and surviving correspondence. Godel (1906-1978) is considered to be the preeminent logic researcher of the twentieth century. His noted works on the completeness of first-order logic, the incompleteness of formal number theory, and the relative consistency of the Axiom of Choice and the Continuum Hypothesis established bounds on the efficacy of formal methods in investigating foundational questions. He is also noted for his unique and distinctive writings on the philosophy behind mathematics, and his lesser-known results in cosmology raised problematic issues in the philosophy of time. Dawson, a logician and historian of science, examines the life of this driven man whose work on the foundation of mathematics has fundamentally changed our thoughts on these subjects and has stimulated much of the research conducted in this century. He further explores the relationship between Godel's personality and his scientific achievements and describes the impact Godel's results have had on our modern world view.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Mathematician Kurt Gdel (1906-1978), familiar to readers of Douglas Hofstadter's bestseller Gdel, Escher, Bach, put supreme faith in the unlimited power of rational inquiry, yet paradoxically, his famous incompleteness theorem holds that no single axiomatic system can yield all arithmetic truths. The tension between Gdel's scientific rationalism and his personal instability is ably explored in this solid biography. An anorexic and reclusive hypochondriac given to depression and periods of paranoid breakdown, he died of starvation in the grip of an obsessive fear of being poisoned. Born in the Czech city of Brno (then part of Austria-Hungary) to ethnic German parents, Gdel did his best work in Vienna, where he remained apolitical despite Austria's slide into a pro-Nazi fascist police state. Viewed with distrust by the Nazis because his mentor and many of his professors were Jewish, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1940 with his wife, Adele Porkert, lecturing at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, where he befriended Einstein. Gdel believed in an afterlife, telepathy, ESP and the possibility of time travel. Providing an incisive introduction to his work in logic, mathematics and cosmology, this rigorous biography by Pennsylvania State University logician Dawson will primarily interest mathematicians, serious students and historians of science. Photos. (Nov.)
Booknews
A biography of the intrepid logician and philosopher exploring the
context and content of his scientific achievements as well as the
fact and rumor of his unstable personality. Dawson (mathematics,
Pennsylvania State U.) explains the significance of Gdel's work
in first-order logic, the incompleteness of formal number theory, the
relative consistency of the Axiom of Choice and the Continuum
Hypothesis, the philosophy behind the mathematics, and lesser known
results in cosmology raising issues in the philosophy of time. The
volume assumes a sophisticated knowledge of mathematical theory.
Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
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