Journey to the Edge of Reason

What Hacker News says

1. smokelNov 2023
   For those who like to read biographies of the brilliant minds, instead of the actual mathematics they produced, I can highly recommend "Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel" (2021) by Stephen Budiansky, which is nice.
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2. smokelNov 2023
   "Journey to the Edge of Reason, The Life of Kurt Gödel", by Stephen Budiansky. Even though it contains an introduction to his proof of the Incompleteness Theorems, you won't learn all too much about logic or mathematics, but it sure paints an interesting picture of the people involved at the start of the 20th century.

   "Silas Marner" by George Eliot. Has redefined humor for me.

   "Reinforcement Learning and Stochastic Optimization" by Warren B. Powell. I'm still not entirely sure what to think of his claims about unifying many scientific disciplines, but it sure is packed with a lot of information and theory.

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3. d4rkp4tternDec 2021
   Biographies are technically non fiction I suppose?

   I really enjoyed reading Kurt Godel’s biography:

   Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel.

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4. m-hodgesSep 2025
   Thanks for the recommendation. I’m currently reading Journey To The Edge of Reason,¹ which is nominally a biography of Kurt Gödel but the first third is about the rise and fall of Austrian intellectual dominance and the Vienna Circle is a central piece of that story.

   ¹ https://www.amazon.com/Journey-Edge-Reason-Life-G%C3%B6del/d...

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5. IgelauNov 2021
   > Really nice book. It contains a very good description of arithmetization.

   Which book? The one being reviewed? I can't read the whole article, so I might be missing some context.

   EDIT: I didn't realize you were quoting an entire passage from Journey to the Edge of Reason. I thought it was from a part of TFA that was behind the paywall.

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6. iechoz6HNov 2021
   The book reviewed is on the left panel:

     JOURNEY TO THE EDGE OF REASON
     The life of Kurt Gödel
     368pp. Oxford University Press. £20.
     Stephen Budianksy

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