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Tables of Contents for Impossibility
Chapter/Section Title
Page #
Page Count
The art of the impossible
1
26
The power of negative thinking
1
2
Of faces and games
3
4
Those for whom all things are possible
7
5
Paradox
12
1
Visual paradox
13
6
Linguistic paradox
19
2
Limits to certainty
21
3
A cosmic speed limit
24
2
Summary
26
1
The hope of progress
27
30
Over the rainbow
27
4
The voyage to Polynesia via Telegraph Avenue
31
6
Progress and prejudice
37
4
The big idea of unlimited knowledge
41
4
Negativism
45
3
Some nineteenth-century ideas of the impossible
48
7
Summary
55
2
Back to the future
57
28
What do we mean by the limits of science?
47
11
Possible futures
58
7
Higgledy-piggledyology
65
3
Selective and absolute limits
68
2
Will we be builders or surgeons?
70
2
The futures market
72
11
How many discoveries are there still to be made?
83
1
Summary
84
1
Being human
85
33
What are minds for?
85
6
Counting on words
91
4
Modern art and the death of a culture
95
1
Complexity matching: climbing Mount Improbable
96
4
Intractability
100
7
The frontier spirit
107
2
The end of diversity
109
2
Does science always bring about its own demise?
111
2
Death and the death of science
113
1
The psychology of limits
114
2
Summary
116
2
Technological limits
118
37
Is the Universe economically viable?
118
2
Why we are where we are
120
2
Some consequences of size
122
3
The forces of Nature
125
3
Manipulating the Universe
128
10
Criticality: the riddle of the sands
138
4
Demons: counting the cost
142
5
Two types of future
147
3
Is technological progress inevitable (or always desirable)?---a fable
150
3
Summary
153
2
Cosmological limits
155
35
The last horizon
155
9
Inflation---still crazy after all these years
164
5
Chaotic inflation
169
1
Is the Universe open or closed?
170
1
Eternal inflation
171
3
The natural selection of universes
174
2
Topology
176
2
Did the Universe have a beginning?
178
4
Naked singularities: the final frontier
182
2
Dimensions
184
1
Symmetry-breaking
185
3
Summary
188
2
Deep limits
190
28
Patterns in reality
190
5
Paradoxes
195
2
Consistency
197
2
Time travel: is the Universe safe for historians?
199
8
Completeness
207
4
Impossible constructions
211
4
Metaphorical impossibilities
215
1
Summary
216
2
Impossibility and us
218
30
Godel's theorem and physics
218
3
Does Godel stymie physics?
221
9
Godel, logic, and the human mind
230
2
The problem of free will
232
4
The reaction game
236
2
Mathematics that comes alive
238
1
A stranger sort of impossibility
239
3
The Arrow Impossibility Theorem
242
4
Summary
246
2
Impossibility: taking stock
248
5
Telling what is from what isn't
248
5
Notes
253
22
Index
275