The One True Platonic Heaven: A Scientific Fiction of the Limits of Knowledge

John Casti9780309085472, 0-309-08547-0

THE SETTING: It’s 1948, the dawn of the computer age. Our drama unfolds at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, an intellectual haven, a place where the most brilliant minds on the planet, sheltered from the outside world’s cares and calamities, could study and collaborate and devote their time to the pure and exclusive pursuit of knowledge. For many, it was indeed the ”one, true, platonic heaven.”
THE DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Enter some of the biggest names in modern science. Albert Einstein — by common consensus the greatest physicist the 20th century had ever known. Kurt GГ¶del — 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 of game theory, the axiomatic foundations of quantum mechanics, and the digital computer. Lewis L. Strauss — millionaire banker and political hawk, he played a pivotal role in the development of the hydrogen bomb and von Neumann’s visionary computing machine.
THE PLOT: Key figures at the Institute begin to question the limits of what science is able to tell us about the world, pondering the universal secrets it might unlock. Can science be the ultimate source of truth? Or are there intrinsic limits, built into the very fabric of the universe, to what we can learn?
In this fascinating new book, John L. Casti, author of The Cambridge Quintet, continues the tradition of combining science fact with just the right dose of fiction, combining scenes of documented fact with creatively imagined fiction — so that the two are expertly knitted together to tell an intriguing tale of science, history, and ideas. Imaginatively conceived and artfully executed, The One True Platonic Heaven is an accessible and intriguing presentation of some of the deepest scientific and philosophical ideas of the 20th century.

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Table of contents :
ALSO BY JOHN L. CASTI……Page 2
FRONT MATTER……Page 3
CONTENTS……Page 5
PREFACE……Page 7
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ……Page 11
PROLOGUE……Page 21
A WALK DOWN MERCER STREET……Page 35
TEATIME AT THE IAS……Page 49
GOODTIME JOHNNY……Page 63
GODEL AT THE BLACKBOARD……Page 85
THE BOARDROOM……Page 103
LATE-NIGHT THOUGHTS OF THE GREATEST PHYSICIST……Page 125
AN EVENING AT OLDEN MANOR……Page 139
THE VERDICTS……Page 165
EPILOGUE……Page 177