When Einstein Walked with Gödel
Title | When Einstein Walked with Gödel PDF eBook |
Author | Jim Holt |
Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Pages | 384 |
Release | 2018-05-15 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN | 0374717842 |
From Jim Holt, the New York Times bestselling author of Why Does the World Exist?, comes an entertaining and accessible guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries in When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought. Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. Holt offers a painless and playful introduction to many of our most beautiful but least understood ideas, from Einsteinian relativity to string theory, and also invites us to consider why the greatest logician of the twentieth century believed the U.S. Constitution contained a terrible contradiction—and whether the universe truly has a future.
A World Without Time
Title | A World Without Time PDF eBook |
Author | Palle Yourgrau |
Publisher | Basic Books |
Pages | 226 |
Release | 2009-03-04 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN | 078673700X |
It is a widely known but little considered fact that Albert Einstein and Kurt Godel were best friends for the last decade and a half of Einstein's life. The two walked home together from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study every day; they shared ideas about physics, philosophy, politics, and the lost world of German science in which they had grown up. By 1949, Godel had produced a remarkable proof: In any universe described by the Theory of Relativity, time cannot exist . Einstein endorsed this result-reluctantly, since it decisively overthrew the classical world-view to which he was committed. But he could find no way to refute it, and in the half-century since then, neither has anyone else. Even more remarkable than this stunning discovery, however, was what happened afterward: nothing. Cosmologists and philosophers alike have proceeded with their work as if Godel's proof never existed -one of the greatest scandals of modern intellectual history. A World Without Time is a sweeping, ambitious book, and yet poignant and intimate. It tells the story of two magnificent minds put on the shelf by the scientific fashions of their day, and attempts to rescue from undeserved obscurity the brilliant work they did together.
Why Does the World Exist
Title | Why Does the World Exist PDF eBook |
Author | Jim Holt |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 321 |
Release | 2012-07-17 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0871404095 |
In this astonishing and profound work, an irreverent sleuth traces the riddleof existence from the ancient world to modern times.
Not Even Wrong
Title | Not Even Wrong PDF eBook |
Author | Peter Woit |
Publisher | Basic Books |
Pages | 336 |
Release | 2007-03-09 |
Genre | Science |
ISBN | 046500363X |
At what point does theory depart the realm of testable hypothesis and come to resemble something like aesthetic speculation, or even theology? The legendary physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase for such ideas: He would describe them as "not even wrong," meaning that they were so incomplete that they could not even be used to make predictions to compare with observations to see whether they were wrong or not. In Peter Woit's view, superstring theory is just such an idea. In Not Even Wrong , he shows that what many physicists call superstring "theory" is not a theory at all. It makes no predictions, even wrong ones, and this very lack of falsifiability is what has allowed the subject to survive and flourish. Not Even Wrong explains why the mathematical conditions for progress in physics are entirely absent from superstring theory today and shows that judgments about scientific statements, which should be based on the logical consistency of argument and experimental evidence, are instead based on the eminence of those claiming to know the truth. In the face of many books from enthusiasts for string theory, this book presents the other side of the story.
Incompleteness
Title | Incompleteness PDF eBook |
Author | Rebecca Goldstein |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 299 |
Release | 2006-01-31 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0393327604 |
"An introduction to the life and thought of Kurt Gödel, who transformed our conception of math forever"--Provided by publisher.
Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes
Title | Stop Me If You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes PDF eBook |
Author | Jim Holt |
Publisher | W. W. Norton & Company |
Pages | 160 |
Release | 2008-07-17 |
Genre | Humor |
ISBN | 0393069443 |
“Finally I understand what it is I’ve been laughing at all these years.”—Jimmy Kimmel From the best-selling author of Why Does the World Exist? comes this outrageous, uproarious compendium of absurdity, filth, racy paradox, and gratuitous offensiveness—just the kind of mature philosophical reflection readers have come to expect from the ever-entertaining Jim Holt. Indeed, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This is the first book to trace the evolution of the joke all the way from the standup comics of ancient Athens to the comedy-club Seinfelds of today. After exploring humor’s history in Part One, Holt delves into philosophy in Part Two: Wall Street jokes; jokes about rednecks and atheists, bulimics and politicians; jokes you missed if you didn’t go to a Catholic girls’ school; jokes about logic and existence itself . . . all became fodder for the grand theories of Aristotle, Kant, Freud, and Wittgenstein in this heady mix of the high and low, of the ribald and profound, from America’s most beloved philosophical pundit.
Fat Wednesday
Title | Fat Wednesday PDF eBook |
Author | John Verdi |
Publisher | Paul Dry Books |
Pages | 310 |
Release | 2010 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 1589880544 |
John Verdi probes how the inexplicable connections of words can help us understand the ever-changing connections of things that we actually see in everyday experience. In his preface he writes, "I explore two related concepts: aspect-seeing and experiencing the meaning of a word." Verdi considers how our experience of seeing aspects, wherever they appear, helps us imagine possible meanings for philosophy's opening question: "What is there?" He illuminates Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas on language and perception while challenging readers to think through for themselves the different ways in which we see. A major influence in the development of analytic philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was a leading thinker in the study of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.