Title: Good Read
Product review: Berlinski is trying to make us feel the conceptual twist that percipitated the algoritm out of the failed project to produce a secure foundation for mathematics. I'm not sure what the point of this is. The two great ideas (calculus and algorithm) don't entirely work for me, but still, it's a nice piece of history with a zany cast of logicians. As for the Berlinkski character, with his digressions and hyper-prose, these literary devices are not pointless, but a disussion of them would be a different review.Also, I think that the section on Church and his lambda calculus was a distraction, a homage to his thesis asviser, even though Church was admittedly a great logician.Finally, I would have liked to have seen a little more on the need for mathematical certainly and the larger "modernist" context.
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