Kurt Godel’s theorem of incompleteness, which proved that no formal mathematical system can demonstrate every mathematical truth, is regarded as a landmark of modern thoughts. Although the famous idea seems simple, the technicalities of its proof are forbidding.

Philosophy professor, novelist and MacArthur Fellow Rebecca Goldstein reinterprets the evidence and restores the meaning of Godel’s famous idea, which he proposed. Although Goldstein doesn’t succeed in explaining the proof’s mechanics to lay readers, she does a good job of exploring its rich philosophical implications.

Godel, according to Goldstein, was an intellectual heir to Plato and his sense of alienation from the positivists and postmodernists of the 1940s was only ameliorated by his friendship with Albert Einstein.

Goldstein writes, “That [Godel’s] work, like Einstein’s, has been interpreted as not only consistent with the revolt against objectivity but also among its most compelling driving forces is ... more than a little ironic.”

A brilliant introduction to the life and thought of a great man.