Kurt Gödel Philosopher-Scientist

Kurt Gödel Philosopher-Scientist
Author: Collectif
Publisher: Presses universitaires de Provence
Total Pages: 495
Release: 2021-10-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Most of the essays that are collected in this volume are the outcome of talks given at the international conference Kurt Gödel Philosopher: From Logic to Cosmology that was held in Aix-en-Provence (France) in summer 2013. In addition many of the authors belong to a group of scientists who have contributed to a project with the same title under the direction of Gabriella Crocco, to a larger or lesser degree.For this reason the volume represents more than just a collection of essays on Gödel. It is in fact the product of a long and enduring international collaboration. There was a group in France that worked on the transcriptions of the Max Phil and its interpretations. It consisted of: Mark van Atten, Eric Audureau, Julien Bertrand, Paola Cantù, Gabriella Crocco, Eva-Maria Engelen, Amélie Mertens and Robin Rollinger. And then there was a group of experts in Gödel studies and logic to whom the results of this ongoing research were presented and with whom they were discussed every now and then. This group consisted of: John W. Dawson Jr. and Cheryl Dawson, Akihiro Kanamori, Per Martin-Löf, Göran Sundholm and Richard Tieszen. For the conference the group of experts was enlarged by Eberhard Knobloch and Massimo Mugnai as authorities on Leibniz – to whom Gödel refers quite often – and by several Gödel-enthusiasts who gave us great pleasure by reacting to our call for papers. The transcriptions of notebooks IX, X, XI, and XII were only made accessible to the experts for their lectures at the conference even though not all of the transcriptions are yet ready for circulation or for publication.

Incompleteness

Incompleteness
Author: Rebecca Goldstein
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2006-01-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393327604

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

Reflections on Kurt Gödel

Reflections on Kurt Gödel
Author: Hao Wang
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 1990-03-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780262730877

Newton/Descartes. Einstein/Gödel. The seventeenth century had its scientific and philosophical geniuses. Why shouldn't ours have them as well? Kurt Gödel was indisputably one of the greatest thinkers of our time, and in this first extended treatment of his life and work, Hao Wang, who was in close contact with Gödel in his last years, brings out the full subtlety of Gödel's ideas and their connection with grand themes in the history of mathematics and philosophy. The subjects he covers include the completeness of elementary logic, the limits of formalization, the problem of evidence, the concept of set, the philosophy of mathematics, time, and relativity theory, metaphysics and religion, as well as general ideas on philosophy as a worldview. Wang, whose reflections on his colleague also serve to clarify his own philosophical thoughts, distinguishes his ideas from those of Gödel's and on points of agreement develops Gödel's views further. The book provides a generous array of information on and interpretation of the two main phases of Gödel's career - the years between 1924 and 1939 at the University of Vienna, which were marked by intense mathematical creativity, and the period from 1940 to his death in 1978, during which he was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, a time in which Gödel's interests steadily shifted from questions of logic to metaphysics. And it also examines Gödel's relations with the Vienna Circle, his philosophical differences with Carnap and Wittgenstein, the intimate and mutually fruitful friendship with Einstein, and the periodic bouts of depression for which Gödel was hospitalized a number of times over the course of his life. A Bradford Book.

A World Without Time

A World Without Time
Author: Palle Yourgrau
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2009-03-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 078673700X

It is a widely known but little considered fact that Albert Einstein and Kurt Godel were best friends for the last decade and a half of Einstein's life. The two walked home together from Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study every day; they shared ideas about physics, philosophy, politics, and the lost world of German science in which they had grown up. By 1949, Godel had produced a remarkable proof: In any universe described by the Theory of Relativity, time cannot exist . Einstein endorsed this result-reluctantly, since it decisively overthrew the classical world-view to which he was committed. But he could find no way to refute it, and in the half-century since then, neither has anyone else. Even more remarkable than this stunning discovery, however, was what happened afterward: nothing. Cosmologists and philosophers alike have proceeded with their work as if Godel's proof never existed -one of the greatest scandals of modern intellectual history. A World Without Time is a sweeping, ambitious book, and yet poignant and intimate. It tells the story of two magnificent minds put on the shelf by the scientific fashions of their day, and attempts to rescue from undeserved obscurity the brilliant work they did together.

Kurt Gödel and the Foundations of Mathematics

Kurt Gödel and the Foundations of Mathematics
Author: Matthias Baaz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2011-06-06
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1139498436

This volume commemorates the life, work and foundational views of Kurt Gödel (1906–78), most famous for his hallmark works on the completeness of first-order logic, the incompleteness of number theory, and the consistency - with the other widely accepted axioms of set theory - of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum hypothesis. It explores current research, advances and ideas for future directions not only in the foundations of mathematics and logic, but also in the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, physics, cosmology, philosophy, theology and the history of science. The discussion is supplemented by personal reflections from several scholars who knew Gödel personally, providing some interesting insights into his life. By putting his ideas and life's work into the context of current thinking and perceptions, this book will extend the impact of Gödel's fundamental work in mathematics, logic, philosophy and other disciplines for future generations of researchers.

Kurt Gödel: Collected Works: Volume III

Kurt Gödel: Collected Works: Volume III
Author: Kurt Gödel
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 558
Release: 1986
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0195072553

"Anyone interested in the life and work of Kurt Gödel, or in the history of mathematical logic in this century, is indebted to all of the contributors to this volume for the care with which they have presented Gödel's work. They have succeeded in using their own expertise to elucidate both the nature and significance of what Gödel and, in turn, mathematical logic have accomplished." --Isis (on volume I). The third volume brings togetherGödels unpublished essays and lectures.

A Logical Journey

A Logical Journey
Author: Hao Wang
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 420
Release: 1997-02-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780262261258

Hao Wang (1921-1995) was one of the few confidants of the great mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel. A Logical Journey is a continuation of Wang's Reflections on Gödel and also elaborates on discussions contained in From Mathematics to Philosophy. A decade in preparation, it contains important and unfamiliar insights into Gödel's views on a wide range of issues, from Platonism and the nature of logic, to minds and machines, the existence of God, and positivism and phenomenology. The impact of Gödel's theorem on twentieth-century thought is on par with that of Einstein's theory of relativity, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, or Keynesian economics. These previously unpublished intimate and informal conversations, however, bring to light and amplify Gödel's other major contributions to logic and philosophy. They reveal that there is much more in Gödel's philosophy of mathematics than is commonly believed, and more in his philosophy than his philosophy of mathematics. Wang writes that "it is even possible that his quite informal and loosely structured conversations with me, which I am freely using in this book, will turn out to be the fullest existing expression of the diverse components of his inadequately articulated general philosophy." The first two chapters are devoted to Gödel's life and mental development. In the chapters that follow, Wang illustrates the quest for overarching solutions and grand unifications of knowledge and action in Gödel's written speculations on God and an afterlife. He gives the background and a chronological summary of the conversations, considers Gödel's comments on philosophies and philosophers (his support of Husserl's phenomenology and his digressions on Kant and Wittgenstein), and his attempt to demonstrate the superiority of the mind's power over brains and machines. Three chapters are tied together by what Wang perceives to be Gödel's governing ideal of philosophy: an exact theory in which mathematics and Newtonian physics serve as a model for philosophy or metaphysics. Finally, in an epilog Wang sketches his own approach to philosophy in contrast to his interpretation of Gödel's outlook.

When Einstein Walked with Gödel

When Einstein Walked with Gödel
Author: Jim Holt
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0374717842

From Jim Holt, the New York Times bestselling author of Why Does the World Exist?, comes an entertaining and accessible guide to the most profound scientific and mathematical ideas of recent centuries in When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought. Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot. Holt offers a painless and playful introduction to many of our most beautiful but least understood ideas, from Einsteinian relativity to string theory, and also invites us to consider why the greatest logician of the twentieth century believed the U.S. Constitution contained a terrible contradiction—and whether the universe truly has a future.

Kurt Gödel

Kurt Gödel
Author: Maria Hämeen-Anttila
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2021-12-15
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 3030872963

Paris of the year 1900 left two landmarks: the Tour Eiffel, and David Hilbert's celebrated list of twenty-four mathematical problems presented at a conference opening the new century. Kurt Gödel, a logical icon of that time, showed Hilbert's ideal of complete axiomatization of mathematics to be unattainable. The result, of 1931, is called Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Gödel then went on to attack Hilbert's first and second Paris problems, namely Cantor's continuum problem about the type of infinity of the real numbers, and the freedom from contradiction of the theory of real numbers. By 1963, it became clear that Hilbert's first question could not be answered by any known means, half of the credit of this seeming faux pas going to Gödel. The second is a problem still wide open. Gödel worked on it for years, with no definitive results; The best he could offer was a start with the arithmetic of the entire numbers. This book, Gödel's lectures at the famous Princeton Institute for Advanced Study in 1941, shows how far he had come with Hilbert's second problem, namely to a theory of computable functionals of finite type and a proof of the consistency of ordinary arithmetic. It offers indispensable reading for logicians, mathematicians, and computer scientists interested in foundational questions. It will form a basis for further investigations into Gödel's vast Nachlass of unpublished notes on how to extend the results of his lectures to the theory of real numbers. The book also gives insights into the conceptual and formal work that is needed for the solution of profound scientific questions, by one of the central figures of 20th century science and philosophy.

The Disappearance of Time

The Disappearance of Time
Author: Palle Yourgrau
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1991-10-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780521410120

This is a book about the philosophy of time, and in particular the philosophy of the great logician Kurt Godel (1906-1978). It evaluates Godel's attempt to show that Einstein has not so much explained time as explained it away. Unlike recent more technical studies, it focuses on the reality of time. The book explores Godel's conception of time, existence, and truth with special reference to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Frege. In the light of this investigation an attempt is made to shed light on such issues as the precise sense in which Godel believed in the possibility of time travel, the relationship of the reality of time to the objectivity of temporal becoming, and the significance of time for human existence.This is a book about the philosophy of time, and in particular the philosophy of the great logician Kurt Godel (1906-1978). It evaluates Godel's attempt to show that Einstein has not so much explained time as explained it away. Unlike recent more technical studies, it focuses on the reality of time. The book explores Godel's conception of time, existence, and truth with special reference to Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Frege. In the light of this investigation an attempt is made to shed light on such issues as the precise sense in which Godel believed in the possibility of time travel, the relationship of the reality of time to the objectivity of temporal becoming, and the significance of time for human existence.