« Blogrolling away | Main | Darknet » Truth, madness, and logicOdd that Gödel, one of the three greatest logicians of all time, was also a paranoid schizophrenic. Barnard physicist and writer Janna Levin's writing a novel called A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, about which she says "This is a story. Does that make it fiction? It's based on truth like all of our stories. It's a story of coded secrets and psychotic delusions, mathematics and war. It's a chronicle of the strange lives of Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel. These stories are so strange, so incredible, that they are totally unbelievable. Except they're true. And fact is more extraordinary than fiction." Edge.org has an excerpt from the book. Gödel didn't believe that truth would elude us. He proved it would. He didn't invent a myth to conform to his prejudice of the world at least not when it came to mathematics. He discovered his theorem as surely as if it was a rock he had dug up from the ground. He could pass it around the table and it would be as real as that rock. If anyone cared to, they could dig it up where he buried it and find it just the same. Look for it and you'll find it where he said it is, just off center from where you're staring. There are faint stars in the night sky that you can see but only if you look to the side of where they shine. They burn too weakly or are too far to be seen directly, even if you stare. But you can see them out of the corner of your eye because the cells on the periphery of your retina are more sensitive to light. Maybe truth is just like that. You can see it, but only out of the corner of your eye. jon posted this at 4:52 PM |
read weblogsky! latest posts: |
