A World without Time
The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein
Palle Yourgrau(Author)
Basic Books (Publisher)
Published on 1. January 2005
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-0-465-09293-2 (ISBN)
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Description
An intimate and revealing portrait of two of the twentieth century's most brilliant scientists 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.
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.
More details
Edition
export ed
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-465-09293-2 (9780465092932)
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Person
Palle Yourgrau is a Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University. His 1999 monograph Godel Meets Einstein, the only book-length work on Godel's cosmological ideas, has caused a resurgence of interest among philosophers in Godel's ideas about time and relativity. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.