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John W. Dawson
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Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel 1st Edition

by John Dawson (Author)
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 16 ratings
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This authoritative biography of Kurt Goedel relates the life of this most important logician of our time to the development of the field. Goedel's seminal achievements that changed the perception and foundations of mathematics are explained in the context of his life from the turn of the century Austria to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
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  1. ISBN-10
    1568810253
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1568810256
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    A K Peters/CRC Press
  5. Publication date
    December 31, 1996
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6.25 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
  8. Print length
    376 pages
  9. See all details
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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.

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

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ A K Peters/CRC Press; 1st edition (December 31, 1996)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 376 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1568810253
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1568810256
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.8 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 16 ratings

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  1. John W. Dawson

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  2. John Dawson

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    I am Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Penn State York. I received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from M.I.T. and my doctorate in mathematics from the University of Michigan. My work has focused primarily on the life and work of Kurt Gödel, whose papers I cataloged at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

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Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
We don’t use a simple average to calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star. Our system gives more weight to certain factors—including how recent the review is and if the reviewer bought it on Amazon. Learn more
16 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

AquaBacteria
5.0 out of 5 stars The Godel Bio
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2019
Verified Purchase
This is the authoritative biography, which can still be appreciated by those without training in mathematical logic; admittedly, it will not be a full understanding, but the there is breadth and sensitivity in the recounting of the totality of Godel’s life, with emphasis on work, health, and personal relationships, that is the core of the work.
2 people found this helpful
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K. H. Larson
4.0 out of 5 stars Dawson's 'Logical Dilemmas' seems quite good and useful to me
Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2016
Verified Purchase
As a work of non-fiction, Dawson's 'Logical Dilemmas' seems quite good and useful to me, and other reviewers here have stated very well why and how. So instead of re-stating all that, I will limit myself here to criticizing the *book itself*. The object, the physical quality of the bound paper for which you are paying. This is a *terribly*-produced book. I was shocked, when I received it, to find that it is has been *photo-copied* from some earlier edition. I mean this literally. It has actually been *photo-copied* and then those photo-copies were printed. The type is mangled horribly. The characters have frequent gaps and are often only partially-formed. 'e's look like 'c's, 'c's look like 'o's, etc. It requires a great deal of checking and re-checking words to verify their identity, which, when reading the more-technical sections, makes the reading even more difficult than it already is. Many lines are narrowed relative the surrounding lines. The pictures are an incomprehensible black-and-white-only mess. It has the look and feel of a bootleg, and reading it is rather tiresome as a result.

Definitely buy another version of this book if you can. This edition is TERRIBLE.
5 people found this helpful
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Vanessa McHale
5.0 out of 5 stars publisher should be ashamed
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2021
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Good book, but the publisher left out the publication year! What a joke, write a book about a perfectionist and it's full of mistakes...
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Yonghan Kim
4.0 out of 5 stars Godel and von Neumann
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2012
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I have always wondered how Godel got his name even within the Mathematics circle, considering his proof of incompleteness theorem is so hard to grasp--seemingly bordering on Philosophy where vagueness sometimes a virtue. In fact, his proof is perfectly constructive and meticulous, and I think it shows the boundaries of human intelligence or living creatures as a whole. This book reveals it was von Neumann, another genius of the time, who firstly and immediately recognized his work and supported him throughput.
4 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Print quality poor in paperback.
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2016
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My only complaint is that the print quality was abysmal, In no way is this directed at the author.
3 people found this helpful
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Sam Adams
5.0 out of 5 stars Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2011
This biography of Kurt Gödel [1906-1978] is unrivaled. It is written to be reasonably accessible to almost anyone with an interest in Gödel's work, but is not written to create that interest. Dawson intends the book as a complement to the five volumes of Gödel's Collected Works, which Dawson edited along with Solomon Feferman and others.

"Since a biography is not a textbook, one whose subject is a twentieth-century mathematician must of necessity be addressed to persons who possess a modicum of mathematical understanding. I have consequently presumed that readers of this volume will have some acquaintance with the large-scale structure of modern mathematics and at least a passing familiarity with some of its major figures." (preface)

Because Dawson is not offering a textbook or even a mathematical popularization of Gödel's work, he doesn't present that work in detail, nor does he present the mathematical and philosophical background to that work. In an appendix, he does offer short "biographical vignettes" of the following men: Bernays, Brouwer, Cantor, Carnap, Church, Frege, Furtwrängler, Hahn, Herbrand, Heyting, Hilbert, Kleene, Menger, Poincaré, Post, Russell, Skolem, Tarski, Turing, Veblen, von Neumann, Weyl, and Zermelo. If these names mean nothing to you, you will be missing much of the pleasure this book can give.
4 people found this helpful
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Asher Wade
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2017
I would give it a *6* if I could.
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Zeno
1.0 out of 5 stars Quality of the paperback is poor.
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2013
The one star refers to the quality of the paperback, which I purchased from Amazon, not to the contents of the work. Both the text and photographs in the interior of the book have the appearance of a mediocre scan. The text is readable but, after a few pages, I found it so unpleasant that I quit. I'll try to find a copy of the hardback.
Update: The quality of the print in the 1997 hardback is very good, and the quality of the photos is hugely better than in the paperback version being sold by Amazon.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Ingo Stadermann
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
Reviewed in Germany on May 11, 2021
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I was surprised of the content. It also sheds light on Gödel's religious and philosophical views. For instance: Gödel tells of circumstances in his life that according to his opinion could not have happened by chance. He also firmly believes in an afterlife despite his scientific and mathematic background.
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