An Exercise in Infinity: Reviewing Jim Holt’s When Einstein Walked With Gödel

Gödel and Einstein were friends

In When Einstein Walked With Gödel, Jim Holt takes us into a series of scientific and philosophical problems, achieving the effect of a guided tour through some of the most important problems in mathematics, philosophy, and yes, even physics. Holt has an easy way with a hard problem, and as someone who has studied a variety of these problems for many years, I still found real value in Holt’s work even after the third or fourth listen via Audible.

My experience with this book began about half a decade ago, when I read it as part of the research endeavor that would ultimately germinate into the Worldview Ethics project of 2023 and beyond. The review you’re reading now is part of a ten-book review series, put together in order to provide a written train of thought that a curious reader will be able to follow for more information in the vein of Worldview Ethics. Like Worldview Ethics, When Einstein Walked With Gödel manages to survey a vast territory. Essays discuss everything from Sir Francis Galton, the father of both statistics and eugenics, to the career of Saul Kripke and the course of the second half of the twentieth century in analytical philosophy.