03072cam a2200253 4500 133512558 TxAuBib 20001007120000.0 001007s1996||||||||||||||||||||||||und|u 96010732 //r96 9780312143800 Oclc: #34320272 031214380X Oclc: #34320272 TxAuBib Gardner, Martin, 1914- The night is large : collected essays, 1938-1995 / Martin Gardner. 1st ed. New York : St. Martin's Press, 1996. xix, 586 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Fearful symmetry -- The twin paradox -- Quantum wierdness -- The computer as scientist -- WAP, SAP, PAP, and FAP -- Infinity and information -- Can time stop? The past change? -- Werner Heisenberg -- Superstrings -- The ultimate turtle -- Why I am not a Smithian -- The Laffer curve -- H.G. Wells in Russia -- Beyond cultural relativism -- Klingon and other artificial languages -- Pseudoscience in the nineteenth century -- The irrelevance of Conon Doyle -- Wilhelm Reich and the orgone -- Freud, Fleiss, and Emma's nose -- William James and Mrs. Piper -- Close encounters of the third kind -- Mathematics and the folkways -- Mr. Apollinax visits New York -- How not to talk about mathematics -- Coleridge and The ancient mariner -- Lewis Carroll and his Alice books -- The royal historian of Oz -- Georges Perec -- Puzzles in Ulysses -- Who was Shakespeare? -- White, brown, and fractal music -- The significance of "nothing" -- Newcomb's paradox -- Is "realism" a dirty word? -- The mystery of free will -- Computers near the threshold? -- The curious mind of Allan Bloom -- Isaiah Berlin : fox or hedgehog? -- Why I am not a pragmatist -- Gardner's Whys -- The Popperism of Sir Karl -- W.V. Quine -- The irrelevance of "everything" -- The strange case of Robert Maynard Hutchins -- The wandering Jew and the Second Coming -- Proofs of God -- Surprise. The seven-decade-long sweep of Martin Gardner's career is one of the most extraordinary in the history of twentieth-century thought. A gentle muse, Gardner began publishing articles on philosophy, literature, science, and mathematics in the late 1930s, while at the University of Chicago. He has since become one of America's most prolific and accomplished writers, tackling seemingly unanswerable questions from quantum physics to the existence of God. The fourty-seven essays in The Night Is Large have been culled by Gardner from the broad scope of his career, and form the most ambitious collection he has ever attempted. Ranging from philosophy to religion, mathematics to pseudoscience, these challenging, coruscating musings - each with a new introduction - represent Gardner at his skeptical best. His crowning achievement and a work of profound significance, The Night Is Large places Martin Gardner at the heart of American intellectual culture. 20001007. Essays.