Metamaths

One of the world's greatest mathematicians explains his revolutionary hypothesis about the enigma at the heart of maths: omega. 'Chaitin comes across as a kind of mathematical Richard Feynman, intuitive and high-spirited, irreverent and plain-spoken.' -- Peter Pesic, TLS Meta Maths is Gregory Chaitin's exuberant account of his discovery of 'omega': the infinitely long, exquisitely complex and utterly incalculable representation of randomness and unknowability in mathematics. From Euclid to Gödel to Turing, Chaitin's infectious narrative guides us on a spellbinding journey through the historical advances in maths and science that led to his breakthrough discovery. Once there he takes us further, to the very frontiers of scientific thinking. Meta Maths shows that mathematics is as much art form as logic, as much science as pure reasoning, and sheds light on what we can ultimately hope to know about the universe and the very nature of life.

One of the world's greatest mathematicians explains his revolutionary hypothesis about the enigma at the heart of maths: omega. 'Chaitin comes across as a kind of mathematical Richard Feynman, intuitive and high-spirited, irreverent and plain-spoken.' -- Peter Pesic, TLS Meta Maths is Gregory Chaitin's exuberant account of his discovery of 'omega': the infinitely long, exquisitely complex and utterly incalculable representation of randomness and unknowability in mathematics. From Euclid to Gödel to Turing, Chaitin's infectious narrative guides us on a spellbinding journey through the historical advances in maths and science that led to his breakthrough discovery. Once there he takes us further, to the very frontiers of scientific thinking. Meta Maths shows that mathematics is as much art form as logic, as much science as pure reasoning, and sheds light on what we can ultimately hope to know about the universe and the very nature of life.