When Einstein Walked with Gödel

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.

PART I: THE MOVING IMAGE OF ETERNITY
1. When Einstein Walked with Gödel
2. Time--the Grand Illusion?

PART II: NUMBERS IN THE BRAIN, IN PLATONIC HEAVEN, AND IN SOCIETY
3. Numbers Guy: The Neuroscience of Math
4. The Riemann Zeta Conjecture and the Laughter of the Primes
5. Sir Francis Galton, the Father of Statistics...and Eugenics

PART II: MATHEMATICS, PURE AND IMPURE
6. A Mathematical romance
7. The Avatars of Higher Mathematics
8. Benoit Mandelbrot and the Discovery of Fractals

PART IV: HIGHER DIMENSIONS, ABSTRACT MAPS
9. Geogemetrical Creatures
10. A Comedy of Colors

PART V: INFINITY, LARGE AND SMALL
11. Infinite Visions: Georg Cantor v. David Foster Wallace
12. Worshipping Infinity: Why the Russians Do and the French Don't
13. The Dangerous Idea of the Infinitesimal

PART VI: HEROISM, TRAGEDY, AND THE COMPUTER AGE
14. The Ada Perplex: Was Byron's Daughter the First Coder?
15. Alan Turing in Life, Logic, and Death
16. Dr. Strangelove Makes a Thinking Machine
17. Smarter, Happier, More Productive

PART VII: THE COSMOS RECONSIDERED
18. The String Theory Wars: Is Beauty Truth?
19. Einstein, "Spooky Action", and the Reality of Space
20. How Will the Universe End?

PART VIII: QUICK STUDIES: A SELECTION OF SHORTER ESSAYS
Little Big Man * Doom Soon * Death: Bad? * The Looking-Glass War * Astrology and the Demarcation Problem * Gödel Takes On the U.S. Constitution * The Law of Least Action * Emmy Noether's Beautiful Theorem * Is Logic Coercive? * Newcomb's Problem and the Paradox of Choice * The Right Not to Exist * Can't Anyone Get Heisenberg Right? * Overconfidence and the Monty Hall Problem * The Cruel Law of Eponymy * The Mind of a Rock

PART IX: GOD, SAINTHOOD, TRUTH, AND BULLSHIT
21. Dawkins and the Deity
22. On Moral Sainthood
23. Truth and Reference: A Philosophical Feud
24. Say Anything