Impossibility : the limits of science and the science of limits / John D. Barrow.

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.

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English.

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