Impossibility the limits of science and the science of limits - Barrow, John D. (Oxford University Press, 1998)
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
Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-274) and index
The art of the impossible -- - The 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 -- - The hope of progress -- - Over the rainbow -- - The voyage to Polynesia via Telegraph Avenue -- - Progress and prejudice -- - The 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? -- - The 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 -- - The frontier spirit -- - The end of diversity -- - Does science always bring about its own demise? -- - Death and the death of science -- - The psychology of limits -- - Technological limits -- - Is the Universe economically viable? -- - Why we are where we are -- - Some consequences of size -- - The 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 -- - The last horizon -- - Inflation--still crazy after all these years -- - Chaotic inflation -- - Is the Universe open or closed? -- - Eternal inflation
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