Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel by John Dawson (PDF)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: 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 About the Author John W. Dawson, Jr. attended M.I.T. as a National Merit Scholar before earning a doctorate in mathematical logic from the University of Michigan. An internationally recognized authority on the life and work of Kurt Gödel, Dawson is the author of numerous articles on axiomatic set theory and the history of modern logic.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐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.

⭐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…

⭐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.

⭐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.

⭐My only complaint is that the print quality was abysmal, In no way is this directed at the author.

⭐I would give it a *6* if I could.

⭐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.

⭐This book has a kind of interesting way of doing a biography. The subject, Godel, is one of the pre-eminent mathematicians of the twentieth century. This biography, written by a mathematician spends a good bit of time on the math that Godel was doing as well as the story of his life.Chapter III, for instance is a capsule history of the development of logic to 1928. This is to give background to the mathematical world as it existed when Godel was starting his work. In particular it discusses the open problems in mathematics that David Hilbert proposed in 1900. Godel resolved the second of these problems.Coupled with his genius in mathematics, Godel also had serious psychological problems. He eventually died of starvation because he was convinced that the food he was getting had been poisoned and refused to eat. Dr. Dawson has written a compasionate and understanding biography, even if the mathematics gets just a bit deep once in a while.

⭐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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