Free Republic

Once again the double standard is blatant. Critics of Islam are treated as bigots. A heroine like Ayaan Hirsi Ali who faced death threats for criticizing Islam won't be getting an award, but Rebecca Newberger Goldstein will. Ali is denounced as a bigot, booted off campuses and smeared in the press. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein receives the uncritical acclaim reserved for those who promote the unthinking prejudices of the left. Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes about Islam, which may not be criticized. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein writes about Orthodox Judaism, which like the more religious forms of Christianity, is an optimal target. Obviously...

The Incomplete Gödel Gregory H. Moore Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel. Rebecca Goldstein. 296 pp. W. W. Norton, 2005. $22.95.A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein. Palle Yourgrau. x + 210 pp. Basic Books, 2005. $24.Such eminent 20th-century physicists as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg are well known to almost all scientists, whether or not they happen to be physicists. Yet most scientists are unfamiliar with eminent mathematicians from the same period, such as David Hilbert (Germany) and Oswald Veblen (United States). A rare exception is John von Neumann (Hungary...

Gödel mistrusted our ability to communicate. Natural language, he thought, was imprecise, and we usually don't understand each other. Gödel wanted to prove a mathematical theorem that would have all the precision of mathematics—the only language with any claims to precision—but with the sweep of philosophy. He wanted a mathematical theorem that would speak to the issues of meta-mathematics. And two extraordinary things happened. One is that he actually did produce such a theorem. The other is that it was interpreted by the jazzier parts of the intellectual culture as saying, philosophically exactly the opposite of what he had...