The Cambridge Quintet: A Science Fiction - Hardcover

John L. Casti

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316642819 ISBN 13: 9780316642811

Publisher: Time Warner Books UK, 1997

Synopsis

The author contrives a meeting of some of the finest thinkers of the 20th century - it is 1947 and C.P. Snow summons Wittgenstein, Schroedinger, Haldane and Turing to his rooms to discuss the key scientific issues of the day over dinner.

About this title

Review:

Santa Fe Institute mathematician John Casti calls The Cambridge Quintet "scientific fiction," a work whose goal "is to present a lively and comprehensible exposition of the intellectual and emotional uncertainties involved in shaping the future of human knowledge." Casti sets the way-back machine for 1949, and imagines that C.P. Snow (pundit, civil servant, and physicist) hosts a dinner party in his rooms at Cambridge University to discuss the possibility that a machine could be made to think. The guests: philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, mathematician and computer demigod Alan Turing, physicist Erwin Schrödinger, and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane. Not surprisingly, the party comes to no single conclusion, but Casti's format provides a comprehensible, entertaining introduction to an important question, and to the ideas and personalities of some of the 20th century's most influential (and eccentric) thinkers.

About the Author:

John L. Casti, a member of the faculty of both the Santa Fe Institute and the Technical Unviersity of Vienna, has written numerous acclaimed popular scinece books, including Would-be Worlds, Five Golden Rules, and The Cambridge Quintet.

About this edition

• Publisher: Time Warner Books UK
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0316642819
• ISBN 13: 9780316642811
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208