Many mathematicians know about Gödel's famous theorem. But very few know about Gödel the man. Through this book, we come to know the man, especially Gödel the philosopher.

Through this book we find out that although Gödel and Einstein were close friends, Gödel, unlike Einstein, shunned public debate. He held philosophical views which he knew would be very controversial if he were to publicize them, and he greatly disliked publshing anything he could not prove rigorously. Accoringly, he instructed his biographer to publish these viewpoints only after his death.

This book contains hundreds of quotations from Gödel's conversations with the author. Fortunately, the author left in quotations that he he said he did not understand, trusting that others might.

Here are a few quotes:

"Consciousness is connected with one unity. A machine is composed of parts."

"The brain is a computing machine connected with a spirit."

"Materialism is false."

"Our total reality and total existence are beautiful and meaningful . . . . We should judge reality by the little which we truly know of it. Since that part which conceptually we know fully turns out to be so beautiful, the real world of which we know so little should also be beautiful. Life may be miserable for seventy years and happy for a million years: the short period of misery may even be necessary for the whole."

If you find Gödel's theorem interesting, I hope you will read this book and found out more about the man behind the theorem.

Although this book may be somewhat outdated (published in the mid-70's), it does provide a cohesive view of the developments in logic up until that point. One gets a very strong sense of the status of logical development, while at the same time receiving a historical motivation for the methods employed in developing the theory. Many proofs are shortened or synopsized, however the integrity and technical level of the work is never compromised. In my opinion, the sections on Model Theory, Set Theory, Proof Theory and Recursion Theory provided the reader with a good sense of the major results in those areas. The section on computers (and their limitations) was a hoot to read, because of the limited view provided by the author, but otherwise, Wang has a strong intuition as to where modern developments could have led. Recommended for anyone trying to get a unifying view of the major developments in logic.