Böcker av William D. Brewer

During his lifetime, Kurt Gödel was not well known outside the professional world of mathematicians, philosophers and theoretical physicists. Early in his career, for his doctoral thesis and then for his Habilitation (Dr.Sci.), he wrote earthshaking articles on the completeness and provability of mathematical-logical systems, upsetting the hypotheses of the most famous mathematicians/philosophers of the time. He later delved into theoretical physics, finding a unique solution to Einstein¿s equations for gravity, the ¿Gödel Universe¿, and made contributions to philosophy, the guiding theme of his life. This book includes more details about the context of Gödel¿s life than are found in earlier biographies, while avoiding an elaborate treatment of his mathematical/scientific/philosophical works, which have been described in great detail in other books. In this way, it makes him and his times more accessible to general readers, and will allow them to appreciate the lasting effects of Gödel¿s contributions (the latter in a more up-to-date context than in previous biographies, many of which were written 15¿25 years ago). His work spans or is relevant to a wide spectrum of intellectual endeavor, and this is emphasized in the book, with recent examples. This biography also examines possible sources of his unusual personality, which combined mathematical genius with an almost childlike naiveté concerning everyday life, and striking scientific innovations with timidity and hesitancy in practical matters. How he nevertheless had a long and successful career, inspiring many younger scholars along the way, with the help of his loyal wife Adele and some of his friends, is a fascinating story in human nature.

Zu seinen Lebzeiten war Kurt Gödel außerhalb der Fachwelt der Mathematiker, Philosophen und theoretischen Physiker kaum bekannt. Zu Beginn seiner Karriere schuf er beeindruckende Arbeiten zur Vollständigkeit und Beweisbarkeit formaler logischer Systeme, die zu seiner Dissertation und seiner Habilitations-schrift wurden und ihn unter Fachleuten weltberühmt machten. Seine Unvoll-ständigkeitssätze läuteten das Ende der formal-logischen Programme der Logizisten (Russell et al.) und der Formalisten (Hilbert et al.) ein. Später erzielte er auch signifikante Ergebnisse in der Mengenlehre. Nach seiner Emigration in die USA (Princeton), widmete er sich mehr der Philosophie, dem Leitmotiv seines Lebens, und er fand auch eine einzigartige Lösung zu Einsteins Feld-gleichungen der Gravitation, sein ¿Gödel-Universum¿. Dieses Buch beschreibt sowohl den Gödel, der ein genialer Wissenschaftler war, und der gewagte und neuartige Hypothesen zu den Fundamenten der Mathe-matik und Physik hervorbrachte, ¿ als auch den Gödel, der ein perfekter Rationalist war, aber sein Alltagsleben nur mit Mühe meistern konnte und zeitlebens unter Depressionen, Angstneurosen und Hypochondrie litt. Ein Leben voller Paradoxen, in dem er trotz all seiner psychischen Probleme Beachtliches leistete und zu einem Vorbild für viele jüngere Wissenschaftler wurde. Das Buch liefert den Kontext zu seinen Errungenschaften, die ein verblüffend breites Spektrum intellektueller Unternehmungen darstellen, und zu seiner zunehmenden Geisteskrankheit; und es zeigt, wie er eine lange und erfolgreiche Karriere mit Hilfe seiner loyalen Ehefrau Adele und einigen seiner Freunde durchlaufen konnte. Dies ist eine faszinierende Geschichte der wissen-schaftlichen Genialität und der menschlichen Natur.

During his lifetime, Kurt Godel was not well known outside the professional world of mathematicians, philosophers and theoretical physicists. Early in his career, for his doctoral thesis and then for his Habilitation (Dr.Sci.), he wrote earthshaking articles on the completeness and provability of mathematical-logical systems, upsetting the hypotheses of the most famous mathematicians/philosophers of the time. He later delved into theoretical physics, finding a unique solution to Einstein's equations for gravity, the 'Godel Universe', and made contributions to philosophy, the guiding theme of his life. This book includes more details about the context of Gdel's life than are found in earlier biographies, while avoiding an elaborate treatment of his mathematical/scientific/philosophical works, which have been described in great detail in other books. In this way, it makes him and his times more accessible to general readers, and will allow them to appreciate the lasting effects of Gdel's contributions (the latter in a more up-to-date context than in previous biographies, many of which were written 15-25 years ago). His work spans or is relevant to a wide spectrum of intellectual endeavor, and this is emphasized in the book, with recent examples. This biography also examines possible sources of his unusual personality, which combined mathematical genius with an almost childlike naivet concerning everyday life, and striking scientific innovations with timidity and hesitancy in practical matters. How he nevertheless had a long and successful career, inspiring many younger scholars along the way, with the help of his loyal wife Adele and some of his friends, is a fascinating story in human nature.

During the Romantic period, Hannah Cowley (1743-1809) achieved fame both as a playwright and a poet, composing popular comedies and, as Anna Matilda, amorous Della Cruscan verse. But despite a recent surge of scholarly interest in her works, her controversial comedy The World as It Goes has never been published.This edition of The World as It Goes is based on the Larpent licensing holograph manuscript held by the Huntington Library (LA 548). The transcription of the play is supplemented with an introduction providing cultural, theatrical, historical and biographical contexts; contemporaneous reviews; and a note on the text.The World as It Goes satirizes English tourists visiting a southern French resort and the scoundrels who prey on them. The play's cast included some of the era's most popular comic actors: John Edwin, John Quick, Charles Lee Lewes, William Thomas Lewis (aka "e;Gentleman Lewis"e;), Ralph Wewitzer (who specialized in stereotypical foreigners), Isabella Mattocks (who specialized in "e;vulgar"e; characters) and the famously rotund Lydia Webb. Elizabeth Younge, acclaimed for her portrayals of sentimental wives and daughters, played Lady Danvers, and the future novelist and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald appeared in the role of Sidney Grubb.Before the premiere of The World as It Goes at Covent Garden, Cowley's comedies The Runaway (1776) and The Belle's Stratagem (1780) and her farce Who's the Dupe (1779) had been theatrical hits. But reviewers who admired her previous plays found The World as It Goes vulgar and morally offensive, and its sole performance on February 24, 1781, was disrupted by audience members who loudly objected to a ribald scene in a bedroom antechamber and repeatedly interrupted Younge as she attempted to deliver the epilogue, which contained a risqu reference to the transgender Chevalire D'Eon. Cowley heavily revised the play, but its second incarnation as Second Thoughts Are Best (performed March 24, 1781) was also a failure. The World as It Goes is Cowley's most bawdy, multigeneric and socially subversive comedy and features a valet masquerading as his master and aspiring to take a seat at Westminster; French and German swindlers; a seductive countess; a lecherous, nouveau-riche London "e;Citizen"e;; an antiquarian bluestocking modeled after Lady Anna Miller; a fatuous aristocrat who neglects the wife he adores to be seen as fashionable; and a French monk who attempts to rape an Englishwoman. Among the contemporaneous issues and cultural products addressed in the play, its prologue and epilogue are English tourism on the continent; the pantomime Harlequin Free-Mason (1780); the January 1781 French raid on Jersey Island; the Chevalire d'Eon's androgyny; the Gordon riots and Lord George Gordon's acquittal in the ensuing treason trial; the recent performances by the French ballet dancer Gatano Appoline Balthazar Vestris at the King's Theatre; anxieties about ambitious and oversexed male servants; bluestocking antiquarianism; the pretensions of the London merchant class; the pro-American revolution Bill of Rights Society and the London Association; James Graham's Celestial Bed; and prison ships ("e;Hulks"e;).The comedy's catastrophic failure influenced the manner in which Cowley handled controversial issues in her subsequent dramas and provides insights into late eighteenth-century anxieties and mores. Mortified by the damnation of The World as It Goes, she omitted it from her posthumous Works (1813), but she reworked some of its themes, situations and characters in her final play, The Town before You, which was staged in 1794. Although The Town before You, like The World as It Goes, portrays nefarious impostors, a philistine businessman, a spurious connoisseur and a wealthy female eccentric obsessed with classical art, it enjoyed a respectable run of nine nights.

Examining chameleonic identities as seen in theatrical performances and literary texts during the Romantic period, this study explores cultural attitudes toward imposture and how it reveals important and much-debated issues about this time period. Brewer shows chameleonism evoked anxieties about both social instability and British selfhood.