Journey to the Edge of Reason

The first major biography written for a general audience of the logician and mathematician whose Incompleteness Theorems helped launch a modern scientific revolution.Nearly a hundred years after its publication, Kurt Gdels famous proof that every mathematical system must contain propositions that are trueyet never provablecontinues to unsettle mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gdel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life.Stephen Budianskys Journey to the Edge of Reason is the first biography to fully draw upon Gdels voluminous letters and writingsincluding a never-before-transcribed shorthand diary of his most intimate thoughtsto explore Gdels profound intellectual friendships, his moving relationship with his mother, his troubled yet devoted marriage, and the debilitating bouts of paranoia that ultimately took his life. It also offers an intimate portrait of the scientific and intellectual circles in prewar Vienna, a haunting account of Gdels and Jewish intellectuals flight from Austria and Germany at the start of the Second World War, and a vivid re-creation of the early days of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, where Gdel and Einstein both worked.Eloquent and insightful, Journey to the Edge of Reason is a fully realized portrait of the odd, brilliant, and tormented man who has been called the greatest logician since Aristotle, and illuminates the far-reaching implications of Gdels revolutionary ideas for philosophy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and mans place in the cosmos.