Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Godel [Paperback]

John W. Dawson Jr. (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1568812566 | ISBN-13: 978-1568812564 | Publication Date: May 28, 2005

This authoritative biography of Kurt Gödel relates the life of this most important logician of our time to the development of the field. Gödel’s seminal achievements that changed the perception and foundations of mathematics are explained in the context of his life from turn of the century Austria to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mathematician Kurt Godel (1906-1978), familiar to readers of Douglas Hofstadter's bestseller Godel, 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 Godel'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, Godel 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. Godel 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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Dawson's book remains a starting point for our view into the life and work of the man who gave the world incompleteness.
       -- The Review of Modern Logic, March 2007

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Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: A K Peters, Ltd. (May 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568812566
• ISBN-13: 978-1568812564
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #510,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars By a Mathematician for Mathematicians, May 19, 2001

By 

Timothy Haugh (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (Hardcover)

Writing a biography of anyone is difficult. How can a writer, no matter how talented, really claim to understand someone well enough to give an overview of his life? When the subject is a genius like Kurt Godel, whose name is known by few and whose work is really understood by even less, the job must be even more difficult. Fortunately, people like Mr. Dawson are will to give it a shot and he succeeds fairly well.

In putting together this biography, Mr. Dawson has the advantage of being mathematician. Additionally, he has the advantage of being the mathematician who catalogued Godel's papers after his death. This gives him a lot of insight into Godel that other writers cannot have and he weaves quotations from these papers into the biography very well. Mr. Dawson's is a well-documented and logical biography that is short on conjecture and long on footnotes. In brief, it is a biography about a mathematician clearly written by a mathematician. This is both its strength and its weakness.

Actually, I like the purely biographical sections of this book very much. The biographical information is clear and informative, though a bit dry in the academic style favored by mathematicians and scientists. Fortunately, having lived and worked among these people, I am comfortable with this style. More importantly, I feel like I have a better idea now of who Godel was and what he was like from reading this book. His focus on his work, his relationship with his family and friends (particularly his wife) and his ultimate decent into mental illness are much more in focus for me now.

On the other hand, the sections that deal with Godel's mathematics are much more difficult to take. The discussion of mathematics in this book goes far beyond what most people are going to be able to handle. I fear the average reader even with a decent math background who comes across this book will drop it as soon as the mathematics starts and that is unfortunate. (I am always looking for books to promote math even among non-mathematicians. This one does not do it.) A reader who can handle the math, however, will find this book revealing.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent., September 19, 2003

By 

Jason T (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (Hardcover)

An excellent biography of Godel. Examines his personal life and mathematical work in an integrated manner. Dawson is thorough, well-researched, and shows a command of the mathematics involved. He provides the most accurate picture available of the real Godel- in contrast to the anecdotal, 'crazy-genius' stories you see elsewhere. This is not a popular account of Godel's work, so the reader will need an understanding of fundamental mathematical logic and Godel's theorem to appreciate much of the book. But Dawson does provide a lot of history of mathematical logic, including a great chapter on developments up to 1928 that could stand by itself. The appendix provides a chronology, genealogy, and "biographical vignettes" of other important logicians.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive biography of Kurt Godel, July 31, 2001

By 

Ben Rothke "Author of 'Computer Security: 20 ... (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel (Hardcover)

Knowing what went on in the mind of Kurt Godel will forever be unattainable. Nonetheless, John Dawson comes as close as possible to understanding what made Godel click.

Having catalogued Godel's works and personal papers, Dawson saw aspects of Godel's life that perhaps no one short of his wife had seen.

The book is a fascinating jaunt through the through the lives of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. What is also interesting is Godel's interaction with personalities such as Einstein and Van Neumann.

While the mathematics is often abstract, as can be expected, Logical Dilemmas is a mesmerizing read.