Journey to the Edge of Reason

Description

The first major biography written for a general audience of the logician and mathematician whose Incompleteness Theorems helped launch a modern scientific revolution. Mesmerizing…. As this vibrant biography so beautifully elucidates, the truth of a life can’t ever be proven; it can only be shown. [Budiansky] writes vividly, and the book overflows with fascinating detail…. Enthralling. Wonderfully engrossing. 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. 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 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. Expansive … places [Gödel’s] achievements in their social and political context. 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. A brilliant biography of one of the most original thinkers of all time, 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. Terrific…. An outstanding biography of a man of incomprehensible brilliance. 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. Budiansky exposes the social and political influences that shaped the life of this brilliant Austrian mathematician…. But Budiansky’s greater accomplishment is that of penetrating a mind that reoriented the entire mathematical world…. A portrait remarkable for both its intellectual depth and for its compassion. Remarkable…. A singular virtue of this well-researched and well-written book is that Budiansky takes his subject’s life as seriously as his mathematical work…. Readers shouldn’t be discouraged by the complexity of Go¨del’s mathematics; this is the first major biography of the brilliant yet tragic figure and, in all respects, a first-rate one. US