Product Description

What happens when the century's greatest logician meets the century's greatest physicist ? In the case of Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein the result is Gödel's revolutionary new world models for relativity theory.

In the 'Gödel Universe' the philosophical fantasy of 'time travel' becomes a scientific reality. For Gödel, however, the reality of time travel signals the unreality of time. If Gödel is right, the real meaning of the Einstein revolution remained, for half a century, a secret. Now, half a century after Gödel met Einstein, the real meaning of time travel in the Gödel Universe can at last be revealed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #443016 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
"Gödel Meets Einstein is an attempt, often breathtaking, to bring various current scientific, methodological, and philosophical topics into real dialogue with a bona fide Big Issue: the nature of reality and the question of what is or fails to be part of that reality -- such as change, time, infinity, the dead. Even in those cases where most of us will join the forces of orthodoxy against him -- as in his discussion of the Zenonian Dichotomy paradox, where he denies the significance of the standard distinction between convergent and divergent infinite series -- Yourgrau cogently challenges us to see to it that our dogmatism is not of the unexamined, 'slumbering' variety." -- Michael J. White, Arizona State University

"Combining careful scholarship with imaginative philosophical insight, Yourgrau has produced a stimulating investigation into the often neglected philosophical aspects of Gödel's thought. Taking as its centerpiece Gödel's discovery of models of general relativity with closed causal curves, Yourgrau goes on to give enlightening accounts of Gödel's platonism in mathematics, his idealism with regard to time, and his subtle views about the philosophical consequences we may draw about the actual world from features of worlds that are merely possible." -- Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan

"Palle Yourgrau has written a highly informed, penetrating, and skillful book on the philosophy of time. His central goal is the proper understanding of Gödel's argument for the ideality of time from his famous 'rotating universes' solutions to Einstein's field equations. Since time travel is possible in such universes, time is, in its ordinary sense, merely ideal in such universes." -- Ellery Eells, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Time flows. What is past is real, while what is future is not yet real. Gödel Meets Einstein demonstrates that modern mathematical physics, especially relativity theory, is incompatible with those simple ideas, that the incompatibility needs to be taken seriously, and that standard dissolutions of the incompatibility fail. It analyzes Gödel's fascinating views on this problem, showing that Gödel's work on relativity is a part of the same philosophical program as is his more widely celebrated incompleteness results." -- Shaughan Lavine, University of Arizona

"Yourgrau has done an amazing job of drawing out the physical, ontological, logical, and semantic complexities of the problem, and integrating Gödel's ideas within the context of contemporary discussions." -- MIND, reviewing Palle Yourgrau's, The Disappearance of Time

Customer Reviews

Underground classic?
This absolutely riveting book delivers at two levels: first, it can serve for any intelligent reader as an exhilirating introduction to most of the central questions of philosophy--questions concerning time, truth, death, thought, free will, and infinity, to mention just some of the ground covered. Second (and this is what makes it such an astonishing book) it offers, in the context of its luminously clear and helpful discussions of these issues, a series of original and profound philosophical results. Many of these insights in effect open a new chapter in the domains they deal with (see, for example, Yourgrau's powerfully argued rejection of the standard way of understanding both existence (represented in logic these days by the 'existential quantifer') and infinity (esp., the sum of an infinite convergent series). In reading the book you are given a front row seat onto all of this--some of the newest, most surprising, and most fundamental work in philosophy. Those coming to the book from physics (i.e. the 'Einstein' end of things) will, I suspect, be refreshed by the idea of a harmonious and fruitful relationship between philosophy and science that infuses the book (after all, Einstein and Godel talked philosophy AND physics). In short, an extraordinary book not to be missed.

Intriguing but a hard read
Although ostensibly this book is about Godel's solutions to Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and his consequent view of time, it is in fact broader than that. This could be instead considered a book on the philosophy of time with consideration of the GTR and using Godel's views on time and the GTR as a common thread.

As such, it is a difficult read. It will require of someone a fairly strong comprehension of philosophy and metaphysics, as well as (at least) a conceptual grasp of GTR, formal logic and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, and some understanding of Cantor's transfinite numbers.

The philosophical references run from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and McTaggart. It is wide-ranging in it's coverage of differing views and how they relate to Godel's own views on time. Topics such as "The Epistemology of Potential Infinity" and "Frege and the Decontextualization of Thought" are representative of the depth of this book. Discussions of potential vs. actual infinities, truth in relation to time, the ontology of space-time diagrams, and so on, can leave one reeling.

In addition, comparisons between Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and his approach to his solutions to GTR are made, in hopes of elucidating Godel's ingenuity in finding unexpected solutions to various formalisms.

So, this book really attempts to go far beyond it's title. I think it generally succeeds, however, I find some of the organization of the book annoying, and I wish it were layed out differently. (However, in fairness, if it were my task I have no idea how I would go about reorganizing such complex material - it just seems that it could be done). The book is very heavily referenced (sometimes excessively it seems), and practically every page has at least two or three quotes. I think this tends to make the overall flow of writing less than natural, but it is a matter of style.

Finally, the appendix on Zeno's paradoxes is, to me, very well done and worth half the price of the book right there. Yourgrau clarifies in particular the issue of limits vs infinite sums, and all-in-all provides compelling reasons for claiming that Zeno's paradoxes remain unsolved despite some claims to the contrary.

challenging but rewarding
This is a difficult philosophy book, but there are a number of interesting ideas worth thinking about for those who are interested in the philosophy of time, specifically in what physics seems to tell us about the nature of time. This book is actually an expanded edition of Yourgrau's (1991) book, The Disappearance of Time. I think it's a bit disingenuous to issue what is pretty much the same book under a new title. Godel Meets Einstein has one new chapter (definitely worth reading) and two new appendicies.