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.

Takes a close-up look at the stunning discovery made by Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel that was put on the shelf by the scientific fashions of their day and attempts to rescue from obscurity the brilliant work they did together on the nature of time. 35,000 first printing.

(view table of contents)

Product Description: This is a book about the philosophy of time, and in particular the philosophy of the great logician Kurt Godel (1906-1978). It evaluates Godel's attempt to show that Einstein has not so much explained time as explained it away. Unlike recent more technical studies, it focuses on the reality of time...read more

Product Description: The philosophical elucidation of demonstratives is a task of considerable and wide-ranging significance. These words, like "I", "now", and "this", seem to represent a point of contact between thought and reality. Any account of these must therefore deal with metaphysical issues such as the nature of the "self" and the reality and significance of the present...read more