Friday, January 29, 2010

James R. Mayer: The Shackles of Conviction

James R. Mayer Publishing. 2008. ISBN 978-1-906706-00-5
The author sent me a copy. It's a novel with alternate chapters tracking a fictional version of Gödel and a TCD undergraduate. In the foreword, James Meyer says
... since I can reasonably claim that I am the first person to have ever actually understood Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, I wanted to give an analysis of that theorem in terms that are as accessible as possible.
The undergraduate sets out to disprove the theorem, and apparently succeeds. This half of the plot is a framework which allows the author to expound his ideas, by putting alternate sentences into the mouths of the student and his girlfriend. All rather improbable, and unlikely to appeal to anyone who isn't mathematically-inclined, but easy reading for the most part. There is an outrageously improbable episode near the end, where the two of them prioritise attending a lecture over reporting a homicide, and the hero gives a brilliant discourse despite this recent trauma and some preceeding torture. The half about Gödel is a better story, but completely disgraceful. The novel carries the usual disclaimer that any resemblance to living persons is coincidental. But Gödel and his wife are dead, and this story (1) has his wife plotting the death of Hahn and then Schlick in order to assist Gödel in hiding the fact that Hahn had found a flaw in the proof, and (2) explains Gödel's psychiatric problems as the result of his inability to cope with this flaw. This is terrible stuff.

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