Kurt Gödel is often held up as an intellectual revolutionary whose incompleteness theorem helped tear down the notion that there was anything certain about the universe. Philosophy professor, novelist, and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Goldstein reinterprets the evidence and restores to Gödel's famous idea the meaning he claimed he intended: that there is a mathematical truth--an objective certainty--underlying everything and existing independently of human thought. Gödel, Goldstein maintains, was an intellectual heir to Plato whose sense of alienation from the positivists and postmodernists of the 1940s was only ameliorated by his friendship with another intellectual giant, Albert Einstein. As Goldstein writes, "That his work, like Einstein's, has been interpreted as not only consistent with the revolt against objectivity but also as among its most compelling driving forces is ... more than a little ironic."

This and other paradoxes of Gödel's life are woven throughout Incompleteness, with biographical details taking something of a back seat to the philosophical and mathematical underpinnings of his theories. As an introduction to one of the three most profound scientific insights of the 20th century (the other two being Einstein's relativity and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle), Incompleteness is accessible, yet intellectually rigorous. Goldstein succeeds admirably in retiring inaccurate interpretations of Gödel's ideas. --Therese Littleton


From Publishers Weekly
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proved that no formal mathematical system can demonstrate every mathematical truth, is a landmark of modern thought. It's a simple but profound statement, but the technicalities of Gödel's proof are forbidding. If MacArthur Fellow and Whiting–winning novelist and philosopher Goldstein (The Mind-Body Problem) doesn't quite succeed in explaining the proof's mechanics to lay readers, she does a magnificent job of exploring its rich philosophical implications. Postmodernists have appropriated it to undermine science's claims of certainty, objectivity and rationality, but Gödel insisted, to the contrary, that the theorem buttresses a Platonist conception of a transcendent mathematical reality that exists independent of human logic. Goldstein is an excellent choice for this installment of Norton's Great Discoveries series, which seeks to explain the ways of science to humanists. Her philosophical background makes her a sure guide to the underlying ideas, and she brings a novelistic depth of character and atmosphere to her account of the positivist intellectual milieu surrounding Gödel (including a caustic portrait of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) and to her sympathetic depiction of the logician's tortured psyche, as his relentless search for logical patterns behind life's contingencies gradually darkened into paranoia. The result is a stimulating exploration of both the power and the limitations of the human intellect. Photos. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
This year is an Einstein anniversary (see Rigden's Einstein 1905 [BKL D 1 04]), but the great physicist would doubtless be pleased by the new attention his last best friend, Austrian logician Kurt Godel (1906-78), has received from philosopher Palle Yourgrau in World without Time [BKL Ja 1&15 05] and now from novelist-philosopher Goldstein. The author opens, as Yourgrau does, with Einstein and Godel strolling and talking together; but she focuses on Godel and says relatively little about Einstein. Her interpretation of the ambitious but diffident, hypochondriac, and paranoiac mathematician's character is much the same as Yourgrau's; but, well acquainted with mathematics herself, she explains Godel's two great proofs more specifically and in greater detail, and readers who understand mathematics well may find her more satisfying on them than Yourgrau. But while she repeatedly, pertinently cites Godel's lifelong Platonism, she makes less of it than Yourgrau, though maybe no more of it than did Godel himself, whose understanding of time in accordance with Einsteinian relativity she characterizes as cyclical, as against the full Platonic idealism Yourgrau wants to extract from Godel. Surely readers excited by the current revolt against materialism, positivism (a leitmotif in this book is comparison of Wittgenstein and Godel), and subjectivism will want to read both Goldstein and Yourgrau. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams
[A] penetrating, accessible, and beautifully written book.


The New York Sun, 2 March 2005
[Goldstein] has skillfully humanized it by showing us Gödel, Wittgenstein and Einstein in their work, their friendships, and their disagreements.


Book Description
A masterly introduction to the life and thought of the man who transformed our conception of math forever. Kurt Gödel is considered the greatest logician since Aristotle. His monumental theorem of incompleteness demonstrated that in every formal system of arithmetic there are true statements that nevertheless cannot be proved. The result was an upheaval that spread far beyond mathematics, challenging conceptions of the nature of the mind. Rebecca Goldstein, a MacArthur-winning novelist and philosopher, explains the philosophical vision that inspired Gödel's mathematics, and reveals the ironic twist that led to radical misinterpretations of his theorems by the trendier intellectual fashions of the day, from positivism to postmodernism. Ironically, both he and his close friend Einstein felt themselves intellectual exiles, even as their work was cited as among the most important in twentieth-century thought. For Gödel , the sense of isolation would have tragic consequences. This lucid and accessible study makes Gödel's theorem and its mindbending implications comprehensible to the general reader, while bringing this eccentric, tortured genius and his world to life. About the series:Great Discoveries brings together renowned writers from diverse backgrounds to tell the stories of crucial scientific breakthroughs—the great discoveries that have gone on to transform our view of the world.


About the Author
MacArthur Fellow and Whiting-Award winner Rebecca Goldstein novels include The Mind-Body Problem and Properties of Light. She lives in New York City.

ANNOTATION

"An introduction to the life and thought of Kurt G￯﾿ﾽodel, who transformed our conception of math forever"--Provided by publisher.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The remarkable theorem of incompleteness uncovered an unbridgeable gap in all attempts to systematize mathematical reasoning, a result that appears almost paradoxical." The genius behind this discovery was Kurt Godel, himself a man of paradox. He was the greatest logician since Aristotle, as well as Einstein's closest intellectual companion during Einstein's last years. But he was also deeply eccentric and given to paranoiac deductions that ultimately led to his tragic death. Subject to irrationality, he nevertheless put his faith in reason. With the use of an ingenious proof he was able to demonstrate that in any sufficiently complex system - in short, any system a mathematician would want to use - there are true statements that cannot be proven. Some thinkers despaired at this result. Others, like the formidable Wittgenstein, could never accept it. And still others misunderstood it as a torpedo to the hull of rationality itself. For Godel, however, it was evidence of an eternal, objective truth, independent of human thought, that can only be apprehended imperfectly by the human mind.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proved that no formal mathematical system can demonstrate every mathematical truth, is a landmark of modern thought. It's a simple but profound statement, but the technicalities of Godel's proof are forbidding. If MacArthur Fellow and Whiting-winning novelist and philosopher Goldstein (The Mind-Body Problem) doesn't quite succeed in explaining the proof's mechanics to lay readers, she does a magnificent job of exploring its rich philosophical implications. Postmodernists have appropriated it to undermine science's claims of certainty, objectivity and rationality, but Godel insisted, to the contrary, that the theorem buttresses a Platonist conception of a transcendent mathematical reality that exists independent of human logic. Goldstein is an excellent choice for this installment of Norton's Great Discoveries series, which seeks to explain the ways of science to humanists. Her philosophical background makes her a sure guide to the underlying ideas, and she brings a novelistic depth of character and atmosphere to her account of the positivist intellectual milieu surrounding Godel (including a caustic portrait of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) and to her sympathetic depiction of the logician's tortured psyche, as his relentless search for logical patterns behind life's contingencies gradually darkened into paranoia. The result is a stimulating exploration of both the power and the limitations of the human intellect. Photos. Agent, Tina Bennett. (Feb.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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