A World without Time by Palle Yourgrau

A World without Time by Palle Yourgrau

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.

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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780465092932
ISBN 10	0465092934
Title	A World without Time
Author	Palle Yourgrau
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Basic Books
Year published	2005-01-01
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.