- Gebundene Ausgabe: 240 Seiten
- Verlag: Knopf (22. August 2006)
- Sprache: Englisch
- ISBN-10: 1400040302
- ISBN-13: 978-1400040308
- Größe und/oder Gewicht: 21,6 x 14,2 x 2,5 cm
- Durchschnittliche Kundenbewertung: 4.0 von 5 Sternen Alle Rezensionen anzeigen (1 Kundenrezension)
- Amazon Bestseller-Rang: Nr. 792.853 in Englische Bücher (Siehe Top 100 in Englische Bücher)
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A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines
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Produktbeschreibungen
Pressestimmen
“An absolutely wonderful book. Godel and Turning tried to defy time, and failed, so the only way to bring them back is through the imagination. It requires a very wise and special imagination, with a powerful and quirky mind of her own, to give a plausible portrait of such geniuses. Janna Levin is a gifted stylist and with this compelling book, she has transcended the category of scientists who write books to become simply one of our most interesting contemporary writers.”
–Lee Smolin, author of The Life of The Cosmos and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
“I love the contrast of Turing's mechanized view of the world with Godel's more openended ‘incompleteness.’ A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a wonderfully imagined book.”
–Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams
“A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a wonderfully original book. Janna Levin's compelling narrative artfully straddles the realms of fiction and non-fiction, allowing us to viscerally experience the tortured lives of two towering intellects–Godel and Turing–while learning how each, in his own way, left a profound imprint on human thought.”
–Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe
–Lee Smolin, author of The Life of The Cosmos and Three Roads to Quantum Gravity
“I love the contrast of Turing's mechanized view of the world with Godel's more openended ‘incompleteness.’ A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a wonderfully imagined book.”
–Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams
“A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a wonderfully original book. Janna Levin's compelling narrative artfully straddles the realms of fiction and non-fiction, allowing us to viscerally experience the tortured lives of two towering intellects–Godel and Turing–while learning how each, in his own way, left a profound imprint on human thought.”
–Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe
Kurzbeschreibung
In this remarkable work of fiction, astrophysicist Janna Levin reimagines the lives of two of the most important and influential minds of our time.
The narrator is a scientist herself, a physicist obsessed with Kurt Gödel, the greatest logician of many centuries, and with Alan Turing, the extraordinary mathematician, breaker of the Enigma Code during World War II. “They are both brilliantly original and outsiders,” the narrator tells us. “They are both besotted with mathematics. But for all their devotion, mathematics is indifferent, unaltered by any of their dramas . . . Against indifference, I want to tell their stories.” Which she does in a haunting, incantatory voice, the two lives unfolding in parallel narratives that overlap in the magnitude of each man’s achievement and demise: Gödel, delusional and paranoid, would starve himself to death; Turing, arrested for homosexual activities, would be driven to suicide. And they meet as well in the narrator’s mind, where facts are interwoven with her desire and determination to find meaning in the maze of their stories: two men devoted to truth of the highest abstract nature, yet unable to grasp the mundane truths of their own lives.
A unique amalgam of luminous imagination and richly evoked historic character and event—A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a story about the pursuit of truth and its effect on the lives of two men. A story of genius and madness, incredible yet true.
The narrator is a scientist herself, a physicist obsessed with Kurt Gödel, the greatest logician of many centuries, and with Alan Turing, the extraordinary mathematician, breaker of the Enigma Code during World War II. “They are both brilliantly original and outsiders,” the narrator tells us. “They are both besotted with mathematics. But for all their devotion, mathematics is indifferent, unaltered by any of their dramas . . . Against indifference, I want to tell their stories.” Which she does in a haunting, incantatory voice, the two lives unfolding in parallel narratives that overlap in the magnitude of each man’s achievement and demise: Gödel, delusional and paranoid, would starve himself to death; Turing, arrested for homosexual activities, would be driven to suicide. And they meet as well in the narrator’s mind, where facts are interwoven with her desire and determination to find meaning in the maze of their stories: two men devoted to truth of the highest abstract nature, yet unable to grasp the mundane truths of their own lives.
A unique amalgam of luminous imagination and richly evoked historic character and event—A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a story about the pursuit of truth and its effect on the lives of two men. A story of genius and madness, incredible yet true.
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1 von 1 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Es muss zuerst gesagt werden dass ich das Buch bei Amazon eher spontan und ohne lange zu gucken auf meinen Wunschzettel gelegt hatte, im Endeffekt hatten wohl die Worte Gödel und Turing in der Beschreibung gereicht um mein Interesse zu wecken. Und da die Autorin selber Naturwissenschaftlerinn ist dachte ich erahnen zu können wie dieses Buch geschrieben ist.
Ich will es nicht vorweg nehmen, das Buch ist streckenweise sehr anstrengend zu lesen, ich war ein paar mal kurz davor es einfach für eine unbestimmte Zeit zur Seite zu legen und eins der anderen jungfräulichen Bücher in die Hand zu nehmen. Das Buch geht eigentlich fast gar nicht auf die wissenschaftlichen Werke und Errungenschaften Turing's und Gödel's ein sondern beleuchtet den Werdegang der beiden mit einer sehr detailbewussten und träumerischen Sprache. Dabei wird Turing's Jugendzeit beleuchtet, in der er teilweise sehr leiden musste, seine Zeit an der Universität und die Jahre als Codebrecher im zweiten Weltkrieg, die Idee für die Turingmaschine wird kurz angeschnitten und schliesslich das Geständniss Turing's zur Homosexualität, die Hormontherapie und sein Selbstmord.
Gödel wird von der Zeit an beobachtet zu der anfing sich aktiv am Wiener Kreis beteiligte, seine Ideen hervorbrachte, und immer wieder wird über Gödel's Unvollständigkeitssatz philosophiert, von der Autorin selber wie auch von den Characteren. Von Anfang an merkt man quasi Gödel's Paranoia, seine krankhaften Züge, dann folgt im zweiten Weltkrieg die Emigration in die Vereinigten Staaten und schliesslich sein Tod durch Unterernährung. Beide Schicksale sind auf eine sehr tragische und teils traurige Weise dargestellt.
Zusammenfassend will ich zweierlei sagen. 1. Das Buch auf Englisch zu lesen erfodert schon Ruhe und Geduld wie ich meine 2. Wer erwartet seinen Horizont was Turing's oder Gödel's Arbeiten angeht zu erweitern kauft das falsche Buch. Es ist eine langgezogen erzählte Geschichte vom Schicksal beider Männer, der philosophischen Bedeutung ihrer Entdeckungen. Das Buch basiert fast komplett auf Fakten die aus Biographien und Schriften der Personen selber entnommen sind, nur hier und da hat die Autorin sich die Freiheit genommen ein paar Geschehnisse zeitlich so zu verschieben dass sie sich etwas günstiger erzählen lassen. Insgesamt ganz ok, jedoch nichts für jederman.
Ich will es nicht vorweg nehmen, das Buch ist streckenweise sehr anstrengend zu lesen, ich war ein paar mal kurz davor es einfach für eine unbestimmte Zeit zur Seite zu legen und eins der anderen jungfräulichen Bücher in die Hand zu nehmen. Das Buch geht eigentlich fast gar nicht auf die wissenschaftlichen Werke und Errungenschaften Turing's und Gödel's ein sondern beleuchtet den Werdegang der beiden mit einer sehr detailbewussten und träumerischen Sprache. Dabei wird Turing's Jugendzeit beleuchtet, in der er teilweise sehr leiden musste, seine Zeit an der Universität und die Jahre als Codebrecher im zweiten Weltkrieg, die Idee für die Turingmaschine wird kurz angeschnitten und schliesslich das Geständniss Turing's zur Homosexualität, die Hormontherapie und sein Selbstmord.
Gödel wird von der Zeit an beobachtet zu der anfing sich aktiv am Wiener Kreis beteiligte, seine Ideen hervorbrachte, und immer wieder wird über Gödel's Unvollständigkeitssatz philosophiert, von der Autorin selber wie auch von den Characteren. Von Anfang an merkt man quasi Gödel's Paranoia, seine krankhaften Züge, dann folgt im zweiten Weltkrieg die Emigration in die Vereinigten Staaten und schliesslich sein Tod durch Unterernährung. Beide Schicksale sind auf eine sehr tragische und teils traurige Weise dargestellt.
Zusammenfassend will ich zweierlei sagen. 1. Das Buch auf Englisch zu lesen erfodert schon Ruhe und Geduld wie ich meine 2. Wer erwartet seinen Horizont was Turing's oder Gödel's Arbeiten angeht zu erweitern kauft das falsche Buch. Es ist eine langgezogen erzählte Geschichte vom Schicksal beider Männer, der philosophischen Bedeutung ihrer Entdeckungen. Das Buch basiert fast komplett auf Fakten die aus Biographien und Schriften der Personen selber entnommen sind, nur hier und da hat die Autorin sich die Freiheit genommen ein paar Geschehnisse zeitlich so zu verschieben dass sie sich etwas günstiger erzählen lassen. Insgesamt ganz ok, jedoch nichts für jederman.
Die hilfreichsten Kundenrezensionen auf Amazon.com (beta)
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38 Rezensionen
41 von 44 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
A Strange Beautiful World
10. März 2007
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Janna Levin has created a strange and beautiful world in this relatively short, very readable, compelling book. She pushes the line between fiction and nonfiction. The book sticks close to the biographical facts of two historical figures, towering intellects of the last century. Their stories are told by someone you might at first assume is the author. Only, this narrator is unreliable, distorting their stories not with untruths exactly but with hyper-real prose. The imagery is too vivid and eventually slightly surreal to be true. Eventually the narrator, a self-professed liar, becomes unreal too and you realize you don't even know who the narrator is. Maybe the narrator is you. Maybe it is all in your mind. At first I didn't get what she was doing with the narrator but then it hit me. She's saying it's all in our minds! This book makes you think about truth, the pursuit of truth, beauty and weakness.
I also found particularly compelling the descriptions of thought itself and the loneliness that can result from getting lost in your own world. I do have a science background but I shouldn't think you need a background in mathematics to appreciate the power thinking has over every aspect of our perceptions.
The subtle melding of fact and fiction is, well, subtle. Not everyone will get it. Not everyone will like it. But if you do get it, it's powerful. This book is special, a little gem.
I also found particularly compelling the descriptions of thought itself and the loneliness that can result from getting lost in your own world. I do have a science background but I shouldn't think you need a background in mathematics to appreciate the power thinking has over every aspect of our perceptions.
The subtle melding of fact and fiction is, well, subtle. Not everyone will get it. Not everyone will like it. But if you do get it, it's powerful. This book is special, a little gem.
14 von 14 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
A Bad Start That Becomes An Amazing Read
15. März 2008
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe|Von Amazon bestätigter Kauf
Although Levin is an amazing physicist, her first foray into the world of literary fiction is, on first read, not so amazing. That said, the subject matter of her novel is more than fascinating and so, the fact that her storytelling and craftsmanship as a writer is more than lacking at the beginning of the book, the story sells itself as a tour de force in its fictionalization of the lives of two geniuses who struggle with a deep awkwardness with life.
At the beginning of the book the prose is almost a torture to read: some times overwrought,
'While they continue to play an anomalously quiet game, the pit of dread is jostled and falls deep into the fertile gastrointestinal soil where it begins its life cycle. Will it fester as an ulcer, or blossom into rancid abnormal cells? That depends on how each chooses to tend that messy garden';
and at other times over the top,
'The iron frame of Kurt's bed was a brutal conductor of the chill singeing his hand so sharply as he hoisted himself awake this morning that it might as well have left a burn, and the cloud of condensation that escaped from his damp mouth could have been smoke'.
The narration changes from past tense to present tense in the same paragraph! While her prose changes drastically for the better midway through the book, this irritating tendency to write a single scene as happening in the past as well as in the present continues unabated.
But, amazingly, halfway into the book it seems as if another Levin is writing the book. A Levin who is confident in her craft and skilled in turning a single moment of the story into a soaring monument of poetry. What happened! Whatever happened it happened for the better. Levin takes command of her themes and infuses them into poetic states throughout the character's events. The most striking example of the preceding can be found on pages 138-9. Levin takes an ambitious but dangerous chance at explaining the event that informs a young Wittgenstein's philosophy. While she humbly admits that this something of Wittgenstein is the unspeakable that 'we must pass over in silence' from his Tractatus, she dares to speak to that silence and she actually makes it reveal itself to the reader.
The moments like that in the story pay of with dividends which have the effect of apologizing for the early writing of an amateur.
At the beginning of the book the prose is almost a torture to read: some times overwrought,
'While they continue to play an anomalously quiet game, the pit of dread is jostled and falls deep into the fertile gastrointestinal soil where it begins its life cycle. Will it fester as an ulcer, or blossom into rancid abnormal cells? That depends on how each chooses to tend that messy garden';
and at other times over the top,
'The iron frame of Kurt's bed was a brutal conductor of the chill singeing his hand so sharply as he hoisted himself awake this morning that it might as well have left a burn, and the cloud of condensation that escaped from his damp mouth could have been smoke'.
The narration changes from past tense to present tense in the same paragraph! While her prose changes drastically for the better midway through the book, this irritating tendency to write a single scene as happening in the past as well as in the present continues unabated.
But, amazingly, halfway into the book it seems as if another Levin is writing the book. A Levin who is confident in her craft and skilled in turning a single moment of the story into a soaring monument of poetry. What happened! Whatever happened it happened for the better. Levin takes command of her themes and infuses them into poetic states throughout the character's events. The most striking example of the preceding can be found on pages 138-9. Levin takes an ambitious but dangerous chance at explaining the event that informs a young Wittgenstein's philosophy. While she humbly admits that this something of Wittgenstein is the unspeakable that 'we must pass over in silence' from his Tractatus, she dares to speak to that silence and she actually makes it reveal itself to the reader.
The moments like that in the story pay of with dividends which have the effect of apologizing for the early writing of an amateur.
12 von 12 Kunden fanden die folgende Rezension hilfreich
Story brings these men and their struggles to life
25. September 2007
Format:Gebundene Ausgabe
Most people think of science and art as distinct, incompatible things. Janna Levin, in her first novel, brings those assumptions into question. A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines follows the lives of two prominent scientists, Kurt Godel and Alan Turing. The two were great geniuses of their times, and made scientific discoveries that changed the world: Godel proved mathematically that mathematics is limited in what we can know; Turing imagined and developed a machine to break the Nazi Enigma Code and subsequently paved the way for the invention of the computer.
But while you follow these mathematic achievements, you never get bogged down in their details. Levin does an excellent job referring to the science without derailing the narrative by attempting to explain it. The story is really about the personal struggles of these men of genius, their social ineptness, their anguish, their battles with faith and desire. The two men never met. The story alternates chapters between their two lives - Godel in Vienna in the 1930s and Turing in England from the 1930-1950s. But Turing knows of Godel's work, is affected by it, and their stories feel right being told together like they are.
Reading this book, you can imagine the pain of being socially outcast, of being misunderstood because your genius in one area renders your mind incomprehensible to other people, and your life an oddity that people pity or fear. By doing thorough research into the lives of Godel and Turing, Levin was able to base her fictionalized account on solid ground. What she imagines, with compassion and keen insight, is the anguish of their inner lives. Because of her own background in science (Levin is a professor of physics and astronomy), she understands the mathematics behind Godel's and Turing's achievements. She also, however, bridges the gap between that science and the art of storytelling, to depict their personal struggles, their day-to-day lives, loves, and the pain of being a human being trapped within a genius that separates you, in a specific but real way, from the rest of the world.
Armchair Interviews says: Such geniuses.
Interesting interview with Levin can be found on the website of the science magazine Seed, March 2007.
But while you follow these mathematic achievements, you never get bogged down in their details. Levin does an excellent job referring to the science without derailing the narrative by attempting to explain it. The story is really about the personal struggles of these men of genius, their social ineptness, their anguish, their battles with faith and desire. The two men never met. The story alternates chapters between their two lives - Godel in Vienna in the 1930s and Turing in England from the 1930-1950s. But Turing knows of Godel's work, is affected by it, and their stories feel right being told together like they are.
Reading this book, you can imagine the pain of being socially outcast, of being misunderstood because your genius in one area renders your mind incomprehensible to other people, and your life an oddity that people pity or fear. By doing thorough research into the lives of Godel and Turing, Levin was able to base her fictionalized account on solid ground. What she imagines, with compassion and keen insight, is the anguish of their inner lives. Because of her own background in science (Levin is a professor of physics and astronomy), she understands the mathematics behind Godel's and Turing's achievements. She also, however, bridges the gap between that science and the art of storytelling, to depict their personal struggles, their day-to-day lives, loves, and the pain of being a human being trapped within a genius that separates you, in a specific but real way, from the rest of the world.
Armchair Interviews says: Such geniuses.
Interesting interview with Levin can be found on the website of the science magazine Seed, March 2007.
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