About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherNorton & Company, Incorporated, w. w.

ISBN-101324035935

ISBN-139781324035930

eBay Product ID (ePID)7058379325

Product Key Features

Number of Pages368 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameJourney to the Edge of Reason : the Life of Kurt Godel

Publication Year2022

SubjectPhilosophers, Logic, Set Theory, Science & Technology

TypeTextbook

AuthorStephen Budiansky

Subject AreaMathematics, Biography & Autobiography

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight10 Oz

Item Length8.2 in

Item Width5.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

ReviewsJourney to the Edge of Reason is an intimate and haunting portrait of one of the most elusive gods on Princeton's Mt. Olympus. A triumph of research and a wonderful read., Budiansky exposes the social and political influences that shaped thelife of this brilliant Austrian mathematician.... But Budiansky's greateraccomplishment is that of penetrating a mind that reoriented the entiremathematical world.... A portrait remarkable for both its intellectual depthand for its compassion., Remarkable.... A singular virtue of this well-researched andwell-written book is that Budiansky takes his subject's life as seriously ashis mathematical work.... Readers shouldn't be discouraged by the complexityof Go¨del's mathematics; this is the first major biography of the brilliant yettragic figure and, in all respects, a first-rate one., Mesmerizing.... As this vibrant biography so beautifully elucidates, the truth of a life can't ever be proven; it can only be shown., Kurt Gödel's mathematical results on incompleteness and undecidable propositions leave it up to us, as individuals, to choose whether to mourn these limits to the power of formal systems, or celebrate his proof that even the most rigid numerical bureaucracy contains the tools by which higher truth will always be able to effect an escape. Stephen Budiansky's Journey to the Edge of Reason expertly and humanely frames these results between Gödel's childhood under the dark shadow of the Austrian and Nazi bureaucracies, his escape to America, his descent into physical and mental illness, and his achievement of a reconciliation between spiritual faith and scientific proof., A painstakingly researched and lucidly presented biography--a close-up of one of the most influential and enigmatic thinkers of the twentieth century--full of vivid detail and sharp historical insight., Gödel comes through as a brilliant though tragic figure in Budiansky's richly descriptive prose. This captivating portrait of a great if neurotic mind hits the mark., A brilliant biography of one of the most original thinkers of all time, Journey to the Edge of Reason is as deep and precise as the genius it describes. In a paradox befitting Gödel himself, it takes a tale of logic and its limits and finds, at its heart, something strangely soulful and sympathetic.

SynopsisA New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2021 * A Booklist Top Ten Biography of 2021 * A Kirkus Reviews Best Science Book of 2021 The first major biography written for a general audience of the logician and mathematician whose Incompleteness Theorems helped launch a modern scientific revolution. Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gödel's famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are true--yet never provable--continues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life. Stephen Budiansky's Journey to the Edge of Reason is the first biography to fully draw upon Gödel's voluminous letters and writings--including a never-before-transcribed shorthand diary of his most intimate thoughts--to explore Gödel's profound intellectual friendships, his moving relationship with his mother, his troubled yet devoted marriage, and the debilitating bouts of paranoia that ultimately took his life. It also offers an intimate portrait of the scientific and intellectual circles in prewar Vienna, a haunting account of Gödel's and Jewish intellectuals' flight from Austria and Germany at the start of the Second World War, and a vivid re-creation of the early days of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, where Gödel and Einstein both worked. Eloquent and insightful, Journey to the Edge of Reason is a fully realized portrait of the odd, brilliant, and tormented man who has been called the greatest logician since Aristotle, and illuminates the far-reaching implications of Gödel's revolutionary ideas for philosophy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and man's place in the cosmos., The first major biography written for a general audience of the logician and mathematician whose Incompleteness Theorems helped launch a modern scientific revolution.