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In Meta Math!, Gregory Chaitin, one
of the world's foremost mathematicians, leads us on a spellbinding
journey of scientific discovery and illuminates the process
by which he arrived at his groundbreaking theories.
All of science is based on mathematics,
but mathematicians have become painfully aware that math
itself has serious limitations. This notion was first revealed
in the work of two giants of twentieth-century mathematics:
Kurt Godel and Alan Turing. Now their successor, Gregory
Chaitin, digs even deeper into the foundations of mathematics,
demonstrating that mathematics is riddled with randomness,
enigmas, and paradoxes.
Chaitin's revolutionary discovery, the Omega
number, is an exquisitely complex representation of unknowability
in mathematics. His investigations shed light on what, ultimately,
we can know about the universe and the very nature of life.
But if unknowability is at the core of Chaitin's theories,
the great gift of his book is its completely engaging knowability.
In an infectious and enthusiastic narrative, Chaitin introduces
us to his passion for mathematics at its deepest and most
philosophical level, and delineates the specific intellectual
and intuitive steps he took toward the discovery of Omega.
In the final analysis, he shows us that mathematics is as
much art as logic, as much experimental science as pure
reasoning. And by the end, he has helped us to see and appreciate
the art -- and the sheer beauty -- in the science of math.
In Meta Math!, Gregory Chaitin takes
us to the very frontiers of scientific thinking. It is a
thrilling ride.
Gregory Chaitin works at the IBM Thomas
J. Watson Research Center in Westchester County, New York,
and is a visiting professor in the Computer Science Department
of the University of Aukland, New Zealand. The author of
eight previous books on mathematics, he lives in New York.
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