A World Without Time
by Palle Yourgrau · first published 2002
3mentions
1recommended by
3HN commenters
2012–2020first – last mentioned
33% recommend67% neutral
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-Austrian science in which they had grown up. What is not widely known is the discovery that grew out of this friendship. By 1949 Godel had produced a remarkable proof: In any universe described by the Theory of Relativity, time cannot exist. Einstein endorsed this result reluc
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
The greatest explanation I've ever seen for the Incompleteness Theorems comes from Palle Yourgrau in his book A World Without Time. He gives an excellent introduction to his explanation: "To appreciate Godel's theorem is your birthright; let no one, including the mathematical police, deprive you of what you have a right to enjoy."
on “Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem explained” ↗There is also the book 'A world without Time', also about Einstein and Godel, published in 2005 as well: https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-without-Time-Forgotten-Einste... The topic of Einstein and Godel seems to have been in the air in 2005. (Edit:…
on “What were Einstein and Gödel talking about? (2005)” ↗>> This notion that time is just a fourth dimension is highly misleading. In special relativity, the time directions are structurally different from the space directions. In "A World without Time" Palle Yourgrau makes it clear that Kurt Gödel didn't think so, and that Einstein himself, who was good friends with Gödel, mostly agreed with him on this. I'll take Einstein's word above Maudlin's here...…
on “A Defense of the Reality of Time” ↗