Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems sent shivers through Vienna’s intellectual circles and directly challenged Ludwig Wittgenstei...
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Mar 22, 2009
Tony
rated it: 
A very odd book by a physicist who has written a very almost surreal novel about two great mathmaticians of the 20th Century. Kurt Gôdel and Alan Turing. This is really a psychological treatise that I am sure takes great libertines to present a tortured internal landscape of these tow brilliant men. it is very short (200) pages and spends lots of time on specific events that are not often directly related to their great discoveries. In fact it barely touches on Turing's deciphering of the Nazi'
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Oct 18, 2011
Bryan
rated it: 
I found this a pleasure to read. The author has a delightful way of writing about two giants of the twentieth century, Alan Turning and Kurt Godel. The writing has these surprising descriptive passages and nuanced emotional vignettes that are a joy to come across in and of themselves. I know just the gist of the implications of Turing's and Godel's work, but you wouldn't need to know anything necessarily to enjoy this book. It is so little addressed, that it seems too much to say that's it i
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Apr 22, 2011
Tristan
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I admit defeat. I testify to all and sundry that I am unworthy of completing this novel. Whatever it is that allows someone to plow through the angst, the detail, the writing thicker than insincere compliments in a vat of social climbers, I have it not. I love various passages of description: "The cafe appears in the brain as this delicious, muddy scent first, awaking a memory of the shifting room of mirrors second -- the memory nearly as energetic as the actual sight of the room, which app
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Mar 28, 2011
Jafar
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My second book by the physicist Janna Levin. This one a novel. Levin and I share a morbid fascination with mad and tormented geniuses. By genius I don’t mean those who are just exceptionally brilliant. A lot of gifted people get called genius. But once or twice a century there comes someone like Kurt Gödel who makes other geniuses crap their pants. Einstein said that he bothered going to the office only so that he can talk to Gödel – and he wasn’t bullshitting. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems a
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Jun 26, 2010
Stephanie
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The lessons of A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines are hinted at by its name, which is titularly reminiscent of Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: before even opening the book, the reader is challenged to query certainty, completeness, and agency. And from there on in, it is a haunting, poignant read, and one that poses all manner of epistemological questions, as well as those relating to free will and reality. Having finished the novel at around midnight last night, I prodded
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May 29, 2011
Richard
rated it:
I marvel at the intuition that possess me without my involvement, how it leads me right to the source of a greater understanding. It preformed well, to present me with this book at this time.
I was being humbled and humiliated by my ego and its failure to comprehend my new 'friend'. And how could she have know that I was being crushed by intangible, nevertheless, hopelessly real forces at the moment of our intersection.
Revelations revealed enneagram personality type Five. I More...
I was being humbled and humiliated by my ego and its failure to comprehend my new 'friend'. And how could she have know that I was being crushed by intangible, nevertheless, hopelessly real forces at the moment of our intersection.
Revelations revealed enneagram personality type Five. I More...
Sep 13, 2009
Cj
rated it:
How very, very bleak. And angst! Lots and lots of angst. There is no denying that Kurt and Alan were extremely unfortunate in the hand each were dealt, and that their intellectual gifts came with a high price tag; one I would not be willing to pay. But this fictionalized account is of a grim and joyless existence more in keeping with a gothic romance novel than insight into the lives of two very troubled and, at times, unlucky men.
"In the end, she wasn't able to float free of t More...
"In the end, she wasn't able to float free of t More...
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Dec 08, 2007
Ulf
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I found it to be a delightfully unthorough take on Kurt Gödel's and Alan Turing's respective lives infused with plenty of poetic license and young-author chutzpah. Janna Levin shines a light at a potpourri of historic and imagined scenarios that add up to a twin portrait of miserable men that through their extraordinary intelligence irrevocably shaped the future of a world that they themselves ultimately couldn't cope with.
Sep 29, 2011
Kurt
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I enjoyed this book, even though it's about sad things. It requires an insightful author to take you inside the mind of a genius and show you his world. In this novel we get inside the minds of two geniuses.
It's a more successful journey into Turing's mind. Turing apparently had Asperger's Syndrome, and it is easy to relate to that if you're smart. (Or maybe if you're not, to be fair.) Turing had a coherent worldview and his mathematical and AI ideas related to it. He's a neat More...
It's a more successful journey into Turing's mind. Turing apparently had Asperger's Syndrome, and it is easy to relate to that if you're smart. (Or maybe if you're not, to be fair.) Turing had a coherent worldview and his mathematical and AI ideas related to it. He's a neat More...
Jun 25, 2009
Leslie
rated it:
This book was way outside the box for me, and yet also, not. I don't know anything about mathematics or physical science. I'm all into the "soft stuff." Looked Kurt Godel and Alan Turing up on Wickipedia and then began. The author is a physicist and she brings her understanding of the works of these two great geniuses and her compassion into the book. Both men killed themselves. Both were so brilliant that most people probably never understood what they were doing or thinking or
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Jul 05, 2009
Lee
rated it:
Agree with the reviewer who wrote that the idea of this book was more interesting than the book turned out to be. I wanted more detail, written for the philosophical/mathematical layman, on Gödel's and Turing's work and discoveries than I got. I wish there had been more scenes in the book like the discussion between Alan Turing and Joan about his opinion on the determinism of the machine-like mind, and less of the scenes that felt sort of irrelevant, like, say, the story of Turing hiding some si
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Nov 25, 2008
My english is not currently good enough to read this book quickly. I can't read this book without the aid of a dictionary.
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Jan 04, 2012
rachel
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If speculative fiction about the lives of persons so unconventionally brilliant (or brilliantly unconventional) that their brains can't sustain sanity is your bag, then you will enjoy this one as much as I did. Alan Turing didn't wash his pants; Kurt Gödel starved himself to death to show that individual human will can override mechanical instinct. The book is little more than a character sketch of their mad genius. It is heavier on narrative than on philosophy, math, or science, to be sure.
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Mar 10, 2009
Barb
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I was reminded of Vonnegut's loose style when I read this book. To enjoy the story, the reader has to let go of time and follow where the author leads. The main characters, Godel and Turing, are not particularly likable, yet Janna Levin makes them interesting and sympathetic. Enough of the mathematics is included to hint at their contributions to mathematics without losing the interest of the non-mathematical reader.
The symbolism of the apple and original sin is woven throughout More...
The symbolism of the apple and original sin is woven throughout More...
Feb 06, 2009
James
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Janna Levin, herself an interesting character (being a professor of physics and astronomy at Columbia), chronicles the lives of two scientists who, though obscure to popular culture, were essential to the evolution and development of many features of our modern world.
Levin succeeds in staying true to her subjects' lives while telling engaging stories. To her subjects' credit though, they did leave fascinating lives. Between Godel and Turing, you encounter WWII code breakers, delusi More...
Levin succeeds in staying true to her subjects' lives while telling engaging stories. To her subjects' credit though, they did leave fascinating lives. Between Godel and Turing, you encounter WWII code breakers, delusi More...
Apr 24, 2009
Clint
rated it: 
This is an imagined fictionalized novel/biography with real characters and events in which the author writes of the events, conversations and thoughts of the characters. I do not like this type of book and never read them. However, I heard the author interviewed on the radio and it interested me.
The book is not terrible, the author has moments where she writes well, the characters and concepts are interesting, but it is only a partial portrait of the characters and their work and More...
The book is not terrible, the author has moments where she writes well, the characters and concepts are interesting, but it is only a partial portrait of the characters and their work and More...
Aug 04, 2011
Alisa
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Interesting people/characters in this book that straddles the line between fact and fiction. I wished as I was reading that I better understood the math and philosophy content. I think the author probably explained it as well as she could in a book that wasn't meant to be a textbook, but it was too complicated for an outsider to fully understand. I was worried a book on the topic of genius mathematical ideas might be a bit dry, but instead it was almost florid... I think the author captured t
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Feb 10, 2011
Gabe
rated it:
Second read. One of my favorite books. Levin's earlier book, _How the Universe Got Its Spots: A Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Universe_, is one of the most influential works on my worldview. This one is a grand "Liar's Paradox" whose topic, in part, is the "Liar's Paradox" itself. The novel is about ostracism, isolation, and alienation, about determinism vs. free will, about whether "Truth" can ever really be _known_. It's about genius, particularly three geniu
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Dec 16, 2011
Melissa
rated it:
Great book, especially when looked at with psychology in mind. It was interesting to read about how these two geniuses reacted to the everyday life around them. The book is kind of Catcher in the Rye-eqsue in its approach to the two protagonists, following their lives without much plot. However, this approach works extremely well since the focus becomes their lives, interactions, and thoughts as a whole, rather than telling the story in a A-B-C plot. The only reason I'm giving this book a 4-star
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Jan 30, 2011
Patty
rated it:
Sometimes I just didn't want to pick up this book again and finish reading it. It took detemination and it ended with closure.
I found very little that I liked about the characters, mathematicians Kurt Godel and Alan Turning. But neither could really make friends even during their lives.
"... he finally moves his pawn. He thinks he is just three moves from implementing his game plan. His weakness in this game, and in life, is that he is never prepared for how others will act. More...
I found very little that I liked about the characters, mathematicians Kurt Godel and Alan Turning. But neither could really make friends even during their lives.
"... he finally moves his pawn. He thinks he is just three moves from implementing his game plan. His weakness in this game, and in life, is that he is never prepared for how others will act. More...
Jul 26, 2009
Alex
rated it:
A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines floats through the lives of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing like a remembered dream. Janna Levin surrealistically bookends various episodes with her own contemplations. These intermissions are built on the images of her life as much as Gödel’s and Turing’s. She paints these pictures hazily and disjointedly, creating the darkly pleasing sensation of a hallucination.
Madman is too true to be fiction, but too personal to be biography. Gödel is portrayed as a More...
Madman is too true to be fiction, but too personal to be biography. Gödel is portrayed as a More...
May 03, 2010
Julia
rated it:
This is a strange and fascinating/disturbing book--a work of fiction, but based on the real life stories of the great mathematician, Kurt Godel, and the father of computers, Alan Turing. The author, Janna Levin, is an astrophysicist trained at Cornell--but the writing is that of a mystic. The narrator is never named, but I take him/her to be the persona of Levin, who shares both the genius and madness of the two brilliant, self-destructive men at the center of the work.
All three of More...
All three of More...
May 25, 2009
Boyd
rated it:
This intriguing book is a novel of and about ideas--its characters' and its author's. I don't know anything at all about mathematics, but reading MADMAN made me understand something simple that never occurred to me before: there are people out there who love numbers as intensely as others (including me) love words--not for what can be made of them, but purely for what they are. I like the fact that the binary treatment of Godel and Turing focuses on the contrast between their intellects--a More...
Oct 14, 2008
Laurie
rated it:
Disappointing, truly. The sophomore work to her fabulous How the Universe Got Its Spots, this book tries to relate and entangle and depict the lives of two mentally tortured and brilliant mathematicians. It fails miserbaly. Levin was just trying to do too much here, so she failed to do enough. There was too much material just scanned over. She could have easily written two books, but then, I suppose that's been done, seeing as how she got most of her information from assorted biographies of the
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Aug 29, 2008
H L
rated it:
If smart is sexy, then Janna Levin is about as hot as it gets. Yummy.
Sorry....completely besides the point.
What I really enjoyed about this work was the illumination of Godel's theorems, nicely wrapped up and explicated within a fictional narrative that also ties in Turing and his role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code in WWII. Godel's concepts are much clearer for me now than years ago when I first tried to read Godel Escher Bach, in which Hofstadter draws parallels bet More...
Sorry....completely besides the point.
What I really enjoyed about this work was the illumination of Godel's theorems, nicely wrapped up and explicated within a fictional narrative that also ties in Turing and his role in breaking the Nazi Enigma code in WWII. Godel's concepts are much clearer for me now than years ago when I first tried to read Godel Escher Bach, in which Hofstadter draws parallels bet More...
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Nov 14, 2007
Alexis
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based on the writing i'd love to give this book more stars - her idiosyncratic lyricism and the depth of each character and circumstance are what make this book beautiful. but in the end it's just about two weirdo, fundamentally lonely scientists whose connection to each other makes far more sense to Levin than anyone else. Levin is a strange mix of scientist and writer. she's got such an exquisite grasp of detail and emotion, but no real sense of plot arch. this book, and her memoir How the
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Nov 02, 2007
Jocelyn
rated it:
This was written by a professor of Astronomy and Physics at Columbia (or Barnard? Can't remember) and it proves there are people out there who think on all cylinders—both in the right and left sides of the brain. Janna Levin writes beautiful prose. At first, I had a hard time penetrating her writing style. It's pretty dense, but when you catch up to it, you are duly rewarded. The story is basically creative non-fiction and follows the paths of two famous mathematicians who had opposing views of
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Oct 01, 2007
Kelly
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I definitely found the idea of this book very interesting and appealing: a fictionalized tale of the lives of Kurt Godel and Alan Turing. However, I found the actual book less impressive. The majority of the book was based on known truth, but in the name of character development, Levin gave us insight into the characters minds--and this was clearly fiction. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but I tend to not trust it because it feels like nonfiction and so I don't know when I'm lea
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Jun 04, 2007
Trin
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This is a novel, written by a physicist, about two early 20th century mathematicians, Kurt Gödel—most famous for his incompleteness theorems—and Alan Turing—best known for his World War II cryptology work and for the Turing Test. Both Gödel and Turing led fascinating and tragic lives, and Levin seizes on some of the interesting parallels between them (they never actually met—they kept just missing each other). Levin presents the main instances from their lives in a highly compelling way, and wit
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May 15, 2009
Joanna
rated it:
I really wanted either juicy gobs of technical detail or an engaging narrative. This author focused on the separation from the masses of humanity and the internal demons of these kind of super-intelligent figures. Hard to relate to. I really prefer Neal Stephenson's rendering of these geniuses like Turing as far as readability and likeability goes. I'm in no position to evaluate the historical accuracy of any of this, of course.
