| Description |
1 online resource (xiii, 279 pages) : illustrations |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-274) and index. |
| Contents |
Art of the impossible -- Power of negative thinking -- Of faces and games -- Those for whom all things are possible -- Paradox -- Visual paradox -- Linguistic paradox -- Limits to certainty -- A cosmic speed limit -- Hope of progress -- Over the rainbow -- Voyage to Polynesia via Telegraph Avenue -- Progress and prejudice -- Big idea of unlimited knowledge -- Negativism -- Some nineteenth-century ideas of the impossible -- Back to the future -- What do we mean by the limits of science? -- Possible futures -- Higgledy-piggledyology -- Selective and absolute limits -- Will we be builders or surgeons? -- Futures market -- How many discoveries are there still to be made? -- Being human -- What are minds for? -- Counting on words -- Modern art and the death of a culture -- Complexity matching: climbing Mount Improbable -- Intractability -- Frontier spirit -- End of diversity -- Does science always bring about its own demise? -- Death and the death of science -- Psychology of limits -- Technological limits -- Is the Universe economically viable? -- Why we are where we are -- Some consequences of size -- Forces of Nature -- Manipulating the Universe -- Criticality: the riddle of the sands -- Demons: counting the cost -- Two types of future -- Is technological progress inevitable (or always desirable)?--a fable -- Cosmological limits -- Last horizon -- Inflation--still crazy after all these years -- Chaotic inflation -- Is the Universe open or closed? -- Eternal inflation. |
| Summary |
Explores the frontiers of knowledge, discussing the restrictions that may be imposed upon a full understanding of the physical universe by the limits of technology, computers, cost, and complexity; and considering how the mind's awareness of the impossible influences perceptions of reality. |
| Access |
Use copy Restrictions unspecified MiAaHDL |
| Reproduction |
Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL |
| System Details |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
| Processing Action |
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve MiAaHDL |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Science -- Philosophy.
|
|
Science -- Philosophy. |
|
Limit (Logic)
|
|
Limit (Logic) |
|
Gödel's theorem.
|
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Gödel's theorem. |
| Indexed Term |
Unmöglichkeit Wissenschaft |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Barrow, John D., 1952- Impossibility. New York : Oxford University Press, 1998 0198518900 (DLC) 97035202 (OCoLC)37705261 |
| ISBN |
058513362X (electronic book) |
|
9780585133621 (electronic book) |
|
9780195351385 (electronic book) |
|
019535138X (electronic book) |
|
0198518900 |
|
0198503784 |
|
9780198518907 |
|
9780198503781 (TSP) |
|
9780195130829 |
|
