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List of contents
PART I: THE MOVING IMAGE OF ETERNITY
1. When Einstein Walked with Gödel
2. Time--the Grand Illusion?
PART II: NUMBERS IN THE BRAIN, IN PLATONIC HEAVEN, AND IN SOCIETY
3. Numbers Guy: The Neuroscience of Math
4. The Riemann Zeta Conjecture and the Laughter of the Primes
5. Sir Francis Galton, the Father of Statistics...and Eugenics
PART II: MATHEMATICS, PURE AND IMPURE
6. A Mathematical romance
7. The Avatars of Higher Mathematics
8. Benoit Mandelbrot and the Discovery of Fractals
PART IV: HIGHER DIMENSIONS, ABSTRACT MAPS
9. Geogemetrical Creatures
10. A Comedy of Colors
PART V: INFINITY, LARGE AND SMALL
11. Infinite Visions: Georg Cantor v. David Foster Wallace
12. Worshipping Infinity: Why the Russians Do and the French Don't
13. The Dangerous Idea of the Infinitesimal
PART VI: HEROISM, TRAGEDY, AND THE COMPUTER AGE
14. The Ada Perplex: Was Byron's Daughter the First Coder?
15. Alan Turing in Life, Logic, and Death
16. Dr. Strangelove Makes a Thinking Machine
17. Smarter, Happier, More Productive
PART VII: THE COSMOS RECONSIDERED
18. The String Theory Wars: Is Beauty Truth?
19. Einstein, "Spooky Action", and the Reality of Space
20. How Will the Universe End?
PART VIII: QUICK STUDIES: A SELECTION OF SHORTER ESSAYS
Little Big Man * Doom Soon * Death: Bad? * The Looking-Glass War * Astrology and the Demarcation Problem * Gödel Takes On the U.S. Constitution * The Law of Least Action * Emmy Noether's Beautiful Theorem * Is Logic Coercive? * Newcomb's Problem and the Paradox of Choice * The Right Not to Exist * Can't Anyone Get Heisenberg Right? * Overconfidence and the Monty Hall Problem * The Cruel Law of Eponymy * The Mind of a Rock
PART IX: GOD, SAINTHOOD, TRUTH, AND BULLSHIT
21. Dawkins and the Deity
22. On Moral Sainthood
23. Truth and Reference: A Philosophical Feud
24. Say Anything
About the author
Jim Holt; read by David Stifel
