Research Catalog

Title

The one true platonic heaven : a scientific fiction on the limits of knowledge / John L. Casti.

Author

Casti, J. L.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Casti, J. L.

Description

xviii, 160 p. : ill.; 20 cm.

Summary

"It is circa 1946, the dawn of the computer age. The most brilliant minds of 20th-century science gather at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey - an independent institution dedicated entirely to the pursuit of pure knowledge. For the elite faculty of the IAS, it is an intellectual haven, sheltered from the outside world's cares and calamities. For many, it is indeed the "one, true, platonic heaven."" "Enter some of the brightest lights in modern science: Albert Einstein - by common consensus the greatest physicist the 20th century had ever known. Kurt Godel - mathematical logician and unacknowledged Grand Exalted Ruler of this platonic estate. J. Robert Oppenheimer - perennially controversial, the father of America's atomic bomb program, and director of the Institute for many years. John von Neumann - the Hungarian-American polymath who developed game theory, the axiomatic foundations of quantum mechanics, and the digital computer. Lewis L. Strauss - wealthy Wall Street banker, ardent supporter of the U.S.'s hydrogen bomb program, and a key member of the governing board of the Institute. These giants of science and industry are joined by a host of walk-on characters that figure large on the world stage - icons such as T. S. Eliot, Wolfgang Pauli, Freeman Dyson, and David Bohm." "Key figures at the Institute have begun to question the limits of what science is able to tell us about the world and ponder the universal secrets it might unlock. Is science the ultimate version of truth? Or are there intrinsic limits, built into the very fabric of the universe, to what we can learn? As the characters debate these questions, searching deep within themselves and their science for the answers, we are witness to the discussions and deliberations of this august group, privy to wide ranging conversations on topics as diverse as thinking machines, quantum logic, biology as physics, weather forecasting, the structure of economic systems, the distinction between mathematics and natural science, the structure of the universe, and the powers of the human mind - all centered around the question of the limits to scientific knowledge."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

• Knowledge, Theory of
• Science > Philosophy

ISBN

0309085470

LCCN

2003002279

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries