"A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines" by Janna Levin

[Jim__]

The book begins:

There is no beginning. I tried to invent one but it was a lie and I don't want to be a liar. This story will end where it began, in the middle. A triangle or a circle. A closed loop with three points.

At one apex is a paranoid lunatic, at another is a lonesome outcast: Kurt Godel, the greatest logician of many centuries; and Alan Turing, the brilliant code breaker and mathematician. Their genius is a testament to our own worth, and antidote to insignificance; and their bounteous flaws are luckless but seemingly natural complements, as though greatness can be doled out only with equal measures of weakness.

These two people converge in weakness and diverge in belief. They act out lives only tangentially related and deaths that are written for each other, inverted reflections. They are both brilliantly original and outsiders. They are both loyal to reason and truth. They are both besotted with mathematcis. But for all their devotion, mathematics is indifferent, unaltered by any of their dramas - Godel's psychotic delusions, Turing's sexuality. One plus one will always be two. Their broken lives are mere anecdotes in the margins of their discoveries. But then their discoveries are evidence of our purpose, and their lives are parables on free will. Against indifference, I want to tell their stories.

Don't our stories matter?

Have you ever envied a genius his brilliance? This book may cure you of that. In my reading, their genius is intimately tied to their woeful defects. Neither man can relate to those around him. Godel is a psychotic paranoid, starving himself rather than risk eating poisoned food. Turing is close to autistic and homosexual at a time when homosexual acts are outlawed. Their inability to communicate leads to their dynamic internal life, the devotion to mathematics and logic, and ultimately to their discoveries. The few people who do get close seem to be drawn to their genius, and while each appreciates the devotion of these few friends, neither can reciprocate with true friendship. Given my choice, I'd choose a life that connects with other people rather than one of isolated genius.

The book talks a little bit about their discoveries. It puts them into perspective: Godel blurting out the outline of his incompleteness theorem to Moritz Schlick at a meeting of the Vienna Circle and claiming that this refutes Wittgenstein's: The world is everything that is the case; the urgency of the war when Turing breaks the German code. I wish the book talked more about Turing's views on machine intelligence.

Janna Levin is a writer and an astrophysicist. She knows the topic well. The book is 220 pages, and a quick, informative read.

[Sal Minella]

1. She was interviewed on "Speaking of Faith" by Krista Tippet this morning

on NPR and her conversation is accessible to us less-educated. The program is a good listen for anyone wanting to think outside Earth's atmosphere.

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/mathandtruth/particulars.shtml