Gregory J. Chaitin

One of the world's leading mathematicians explores the enigmas, paradoxes, and random qualities that exist within the field of mathematics and discusses his ground-breaking discovery of the Omega number, a complex representation of unknowability. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

The Quest for Omega

Meta Maths!

Dr Gregory Chaitin, one of the world's leading mathematicians, is best known for his discovery of the remarkable ê number, a concrete example of irreducible complexity in pure mathematics which shows that mathematics is infinitely complex. In this volume, Chaitin discusses the evolution of these ideas, tracing them back to Leibniz and Borel as well as Gdel and Turing.This book contains 23 non-technical papers by Chaitin, his favorite tutorial and survey papers, including Chaitin's three Scientific American articles. These essays summarize a lifetime effort to use the notion of program-size complexity or algorithmic information content in order to shed further light on the fundamental work of Gdel and Turing on the limits of mathematical methods, both in logic and in computation. Chaitin argues here that his information-theoretic approach to metamathematics suggests a quasi-empirical view of mathematics that emphasizes the similarities rather than the differences between mathematics and physics. He also develops his own brand of digital philosophy, which views the entire universe as a giant computation, and speculates that perhaps everything is discrete software, everything is 0's and 1's.Chaitin's fundamental mathematical work will be of interest to philosophers concerned with the limits of knowledge and to physicists interested in the nature of complexity.

Essays on Complexity, 1970-2007

Thinking about Gdel and Turing

El número Omega: límites y enigmas de las matemáticas

Explains how evolution works on a mathematical level, arguing that mathematical theory is an essential part of evolution while highlighting mathematical principles in the biological world.

Making Biology Mathematical

Proving Darwin

As a teenager, Greg created independently of Kolmogorov and Solomonoff, what we call today algorithmic information theory, a sub ject of which he is the main architect. His 1965 paper on gedanken experiments on automata, which he wrote when he was in high school, is still of interest today. He was also heavily involved in IBM, where he has worked for almost thirty years, on the development of RISC technology. Greg's results are widely quoted. My favorite portrait of Greg can be found in John Horgan's-a writer for Scientific American-1996 book The End 01 Science. Greg has gotten many honors. He was a guest of distinguished people like Prigogine, the King and Queen of Belgium, and the Crown Prince of Japan. Just to be brief, allow me to paraphrase Bette Davis in All About Eve. She said, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy talk!" Ladies and Gentlemen, Greg Chaitin! [Laughter & Applause] CRISTIAN CALUDE introducing GREGORY CHAITIN at the DMTCS'96 meeting at the University of Auckland.

A Course on Information Theory and the Limits of Formal Reasoning

The LIMITS of MATHEMATICS

This book contains in easily accessible form all the main ideas of the creator and principal architect of algorithmic information theory. This expanded second edition has added thirteen abstracts, a 1988 Scientific American Article, a transcript of a EUROPALIA 89 lecture, an essay on biology, and an extensive bibliography. Its new larger format makes it easier to read. Chaitin's ideas are a fundamental extension of those of Gdel and Turning and have exploded some basic assumptions of mathematics and thrown new light on the scientific method, epistemology, probability theory, and of course computer science and information theory.

Papers on Algorithmic Information Theory

Information, Randomness & Incompleteness

Cristian Calude

The book is a collection of papers written by a selection of eminent authors from around the world in honour of Gregory Chaitin's 60th birthday. This is a unique volume including technical contributions, philosophical papers and essays.

From Leibniz to Chaitin

Randomness and Complexity

This book presents the final version of Chaitin's course on the limits of mathematical reasoning. This course uses algorithmic information theory to show that mathematics has serious limitations, and features a new more didactic approach to algorithmic information theory using LISP and Mathematica software. The thesis of the book is that the incompleteness phenomenon discovered by Godel is much more widespread and serious than hitherto suspected.

The Limits of Mathematics

Cristian S. Calude

The book is a collection of papers written by a selection of eminent authors from around the world in honour of Gregory Chaitin''s 60th birthday. This is a unique volume including technical contributions, philosophical papers and essays. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: On Random and Hard-to-Describe Numbers (902 KB). Contents: On Random and Hard-to-Describe Numbers (C H Bennett); The Implications of a Cosmological Information Bound for Complexity, Quantum Information and the Nature of Physical Law (P C W Davies); What is a Computation? (M Davis); A Berry-Type Paradox (G Lolli); The Secret Number. An Exposition of Chaitin''s Theory (G Rozenberg & A Salomaa); Omega and the Time Evolution of the n-Body Problem (K Svozil); God''s Number: Where Can We Find the Secret of the Universe? In a Single Number! (M Chown); Omega Numbers (J-P Delahaye); Some Modern Perspectives on the Quest for Ultimate Knowledge (S Wolfram); An Enquiry Concerning Human (and Computer!) [Mathematical] Understanding (D Zeilberger); and other papers. Readership: Computer scientists and philosophers, both in academia and industry.

The author, G. J. Chaitin, shows that God plays dice not only in quantum mechanics but also in the foundations of mathematics. According to Chaitin there exist mathematical facts that are true for no reason. This fascinating and provocative text contains a collection of his most wide-ranging and non-technical lectures and interviews. It will be of interest to anyone concerned with the philosophy of mathematics, the similarities and differences between physics and mathematics, and mathematics as art.

Math, Art, Science and the Limits of Reason

Conversations with a Mathematician

This essential companion to Chaitin's successful books The Unknowable and The Limits of Mathematics, presents the technical core of his theory of program-size complexity. The two previous volumes are more concerned with applications to meta-mathematics. LISP is used to present the key algorithms and to enable computer users to interact with the authors proofs and discover for themselves how they work. The LISP code for this book is available at the author's Web site together with a Java applet LISP interpreter. "No one has looked deeper and farther into the abyss of randomness and its role in mathematics than Greg Chaitin. This book tells you everything hes seen. Don miss it." John Casti, Santa Fe Institute, Author of Goedel: A Life of Logic.'

Exploring RANDOMNESS

Dr Gregory Chaitin, one of the world's leading mathematicians, is best known for his discovery of the remarkable O number, a concrete example of irreducible complexity in pure mathematics which shows that mathematics is infinitely complex. In this volume, Chaitin discusses the evolution of these ideas, tracing them back to Leibniz and Borel as well as GAdel and Turing.This book contains 23 non-technical papers by Chaitin, his favorite tutorial and survey papers, including Chaitin's three Scientific American articles. These essays summarize a lifetime effort to use the notion of program-size complexity or algorithmic information content in order to shed further light on the fundamental work of GAdel and Turing on the limits of mathematical methods, both in logic and in computation. Chaitin argues here that his information-theoretic approach to metamathematics suggests a quasi-empirical view of mathematics that emphasizes the similarities rather than the differences between mathematics and physics. He also develops his own brand of digital philosophy, which views the entire universe as a giant computation, and speculates that perhaps everything is discrete software, everything is 0's and 1's.Chaitin's fundamental mathematical work will be of interest to philosophers concerned with the limits of knowledge and to physicists interested in the nature of complexity."

Essays on Complexity, 1970-2007L

Thinking about Godel and Turing

Explores the enigmas, paradoxes, and random qualities that exist within the field of mathematics and discusses the author's groundbreaking discovery of the Omega number, a complex representation of unknowability.

Meta Math!

Chaitin, the inventor of algorithmic information theory, presents in this book the strongest possible version of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, using an information theoretic approach based on the size of computer programs. One half of the book is concerned with studying the halting probability of a universal computer if its program is chosen by tossing a coin. The other half is concerned with encoding the halting probability as an algebraic equation in integers, a so-called exponential diophantine equation.

Gregory J. Chaitin

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