| Description |
1 online resource (xiii, 279 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
The art of the impossible -- The power of negative thinking -- Of faces and games -- Those for whom all things are possible -- Paradox -- Visual paradox -- Linguistic paradox -- Limits to certainty -- A cosmic speed limit -- The hope of progress -- Over the rainbow -- The voyage to Polynesia via Telegraph Avenue -- Progress and prejudice -- The big idea of unlimited knowledge -- Negativism -- Some nineteenth-century ideas of the impossible -- Back to the future -- What do we mean by the limits of science? -- Possible futures -- Higgledy-piggledyology -- Selective and absolute limits -- Will we be builders or surgeons? -- The futures market -- How many discoveries are there still to be made? -- Being human -- What are minds for? -- Counting on words -- Modern art and the death of a culture -- Complexity matching: climbing Mount Improbable -- Intractability -- The frontier spirit -- The end of diversity -- Does science always bring about its own demise? -- Death and the death of science -- The psychology of limits -- Technological limits -- Is the Universe economically viable? -- Why we are where we are -- Some consequences of size -- The forces of Nature -- Manipulating the Universe -- Criticality: the riddle of the sands -- Demons: counting the cost -- Two types of future -- Is technological progress inevitable (or always desirable)?--a fable -- Cosmological limits -- The last horizon -- Inflation--still crazy after all these years -- Chaotic inflation -- Is the Universe open or closed? -- Eternal inflation |
| Summary |
Explores the frontiers of knowledge, discussing the restrictions that may be imposed upon a full understanding of the physical universe by the limits of technology, computers, cost, and complexity; and considering how the mind's awareness of the impossible influences perceptions of reality |
| Analysis |
Unmöglichkeit Wissenschaft |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-274) and index |
| Notes |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
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English |
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digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL |
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Print version record |
| Subject |
Science -- Philosophy.
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Limit (Logic)
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Gödel's theorem.
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SCIENCE -- Philosophy & Social Aspects.
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Gödel's theorem
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Limit (Logic)
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Science -- Philosophy
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Unmöglichkeit
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Wissenschaft
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Natuurwetenschappen.
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Onmogelijkheid.
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Wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis.
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Wissenschaftstheorie.
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Naturwissenschaften -- Philosophie.
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Philosophie -- Naturwissenschaften.
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Erkenntnistheorie.
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Naturwissenschaften.
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Philosophie.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
058513362X |
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9780585133621 |
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9780195351385 |
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019535138X |
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