3 ms·
The Goldstein book is rubbish. Soloman Feferman destroys it in his LRB review. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n03/solomon-feferman/provenly-unprovable http://www.lrb
by ionfish 14y ago
The Goldstein book is rubbish. Soloman Feferman destroys it in his LRB review.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n03/solomon-feferman/provenly-unprovable http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n03/solomon-feferman/provenly-unpro...
http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/lrb.pdf http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/lrb.pdf (full text)
"Those who are fascinated by Gödel's theorems—and the general idea of limits to what we can know—may still hunger for a more universal view of their possible significance. But they should not be satisfied with Goldstein's 'vast and messy' goulash, hers is not a recipe for true understanding."
- altrego99 14y agoI read this stuff in "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose. It not only talks about this, but introduces to Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Phase Spaces. It also builds up all the mathematics required, so if you know what complex numbers are - that will be more than enough to follow and understand the concepts introduced well enough. Very highly recommended. The second part somehow was not as interesting though.
- lcargill99 14y ago"Emperor" is a problematic work at best. He's skyhooking.
- vbtemp 14y agoI wouldn't say it's rubbish - but it's no great authority on communicating the proof itself, certainly. It is a good biography though, covering the roots in the Vienna circle and the disagreements with Wittgenstein. Edit: Thanks for posting that pdf though, I enjoyed reading it.
- ionfish 14y agoIf it's a biography you want, you'd be better off with John Dawson's one (he is, of course, the author of the article linked at the root).