Displayed below are some selected recent viaLibri matches for books published in 1931

Stapledon, William Olaf
        LAST AND FIRST MEN: A STORY OF THE NEAR AND FAR FUTURE
      New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith,. [1931]. original purple cloth, all panels ruled in blind, spine panel stamped in gold, top edge stained black, fore and bottom edges rough trimmed.. Private owner's bookplate affixed to front paste-down. A fine copy in. fine pictorial dust jacket (designed by Arthur Hawkins). A stunning. copy of a very handsome book. (#114650). First U.S. edition, first binding. "The author's first work of fiction, inaugurating those anatomies of the future that blend romance and philosophy, spectacle and prophecy, cosmological in scope, teleological in tone, for which the term 'novel' is wholly misleading. With its telescopic focus, the Stapledonian romance eschews characters and dialogue, replacing them with Man and Evolution. The half-century to come, as predicted by the author in his foreword, would indeed be critical, coinciding with the high watermark of those social engineering schemes that seemed so congruent with the kind of utopian visions emblazoned here." - Robert Eldridge. "... one of the most remarkable imaginative works in the field of futuristic fiction: an account of human development during the next hundreds of millions of years." - Clarke, Tale of the Future (1978), p. 58. "On his own terms, Stapledon is unequaled, and he certainly has been one of the major influences on contemporary science fiction." - Survey of Science Fiction Literature III, pp. 1140-43. "LAST AND FIRST MEN and STAR MAKER soar far beyond the accepted limits of science fiction... Stapledon is the great classical example, the cold pitch of perfection as he turns scientific concepts into vast ontological epic prose poems, the ultimate SF writer." - Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, p. 198. Stapledon's "influence, both direct and indirect, on the development of many concepts which now permeate genre SF is probably second only to that of H. G. Wells." - Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), pp. 1151-53. Aldiss, Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, p. 198. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 3- 56; (1981) 2-98; (1987) 2-109; and (1995) 2-119. Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 2086. Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 718. Clarke, Tale of the Future (1978), p. 58. Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), pp. 1151-52. Gerber, Utopian Fantasy (1973), p. 151. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, pp. 204-05. Stableford, Scientific Romance in Britain 1890-1950, pp. 200-03. Survey of Science Fiction Literature III, pp. 1140-43. In 333. Bleiler (1978), p. 185. Reginald 13553. Satty and Smith A3.2.1.

      [Bookseller: L. W. Currey, Inc. ]

GÖDEL, KURT. - [GÖDEL'S INCOMPLETNESS THEOREM]
        Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I [In: Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik, XXXVIII. Band. I. Heft]. ["On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems].
      Leipzig, 1931. 8vo. Extract, stapled in private blank paper wrappers with hand-written title to front wrapper. With the original front warpper for the entire 1. issue of volume 38 of Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik, from which it is extracted. Uncut. Some marginal pencil markings (probably by Jørgen Jørgensen). Pp. (173)-198.. Extremely scarce first printing of this milestone paper in mathematical logic, one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, in which Gödel sets forth and proves his incompleteness theorem - without doubt one of the most famous and important papers in the history of mathematical logic. "Kurt Gödel's astonishing discovery and proof, published in 1931, that even in elementary parts of arithmetic there exist propositions which cannot be proved or disproved within the system, is one of the most important contributions to logic since Aristotle." (Introduction by Braithwaite to the English translation of Gödel's "On Formally Undecidable Propositions...", p. VII).The present paper not only affected mathematics in general more than any other work of the twentieth century, and mathematical and philosophical logic more than any other work since the time of Aristotle, it also affected and shook the general view of the world of twentieth century man, and it caused a tremendous scandal in the world of science. "Gödel [with the present paper] was the first to prove any unprovability theorem for arithmetic, and his way of proof was subtler and deeper than the metamathematical methods previously employed. Either of these facts would have ranked this paper high in the development of metamathematics. But it is the fact that it was a proposition of whole-number arithmetic which he showed to be undecidable that created such a scandal." (Introduction by Braithwaite to the English translation of Gödel's "On Formally Undecidable Propositions...", pp. 3-4)."Finally, Gödel's incompleteness theorem - "the most important mathematical truth of the century," as it would soon be described in a ceremony at Harvard University - set a permanent limit on our knowledge of the basic truths of mathematics: The complete set of mathematical truths will never be captured by any finite or recursive list of axioms that is fully formal. " (Yourgrau, A World Without Time, p. 3).Gödel's incompleteness theorem destroyed once and for all the laurels on which the positivists thought to be able to rest after having laid to rest the ghost of mathematics, and it thus also ruined the credulity of the Vienna Circle. Gödel was in all respects an opponent of positivism, and due to his great classical philosophical interest and his view of phenomenology as greatly important in the understanding of the world, one of his aims was to use mathematics in a relevant way for the non-analytical philosophers as well, making his discoveries as generally applicable as unavoidable. Though the incompleteness theorem was without doubt the single most important contribution to formalism -the governing strand/notion of the twentieth century- , it was also of the greatest importance to reappropriation of mathematics to all other branches of philosophy. As Plato, mathematics was also for Gödel a deep source of philosophical inspiration, as the means of describing the physical world, as well as in itself, and naturally in its relationship to logic."Unlike Einstein, a classicist who forever sought continuity with the past, Gödel was at heart an ironist, a truly subversive thinker. With his incompleteness theorem he had shaken the foundations of mathematics, prompting the great mathematician David Hilbert to propose a new law of logic just to refute Gödel's results. The Gödel universe, correctly understood, shares with the incompleteness theorem an underlying methodology and purpose. It is a bomb, built from cosmology's most cherished materials, lobbed into the foundations of physics." (Yourgrau, A World Without Time, p. 8).The present paper, which is of the utmost scarcity in the first printing, is without doubt one of, if not the, most famous and important papers in the history of mathematical logic. "It is no exaggeration to regard U ("On Formally Undecidable Propositiones...") as the greatest single piece of work in the whole history of mathematical logic. In many ways it pulled together, consolidated, and raised previous work to a much higher level in nearly all major directions, proving surprising central results, making old concepts precise, introducing new concepts, and opening up wholly new horizons." (Wang, Reflections on Kurt Gödel, p. 275).From the library of the highly important Danish logician and philosopher Jørgen Jørgensen (1894-1969), who was an active collaborator with the logical positivists from the Vienna Circle. After Hans Hahn's death he became editor of the series of the Vienna Circle, the "Einheitswissenchaft" ("Unified Science"), and later he collaborated on the International Encyclopedia, to which he contributed with the essay "The Development of Logical Empiricism", 1951. Jørgensen is also widely recognized for his three volume work "Treatise of Formal Logic; Its Evolution and Main Branches, with its Relations to Mathematics and Philosophy", 1931.Apart from the paramount importance of the paper, it is also of the utmost rarity, as evidenced by the fact that it is neither present in the collection of Honeyman, Barchas, Haskell Norman, nor Hook & Norman: Origins of Cyberspace, and furthermore, the paper has not been up for sale on any of the major auction houses for at least the last 50 years

      [Bookseller: Lynge & Søn A/S]

SHAW, Charles G
        Nightlife: Vanity Fair's Intimate Guide to New York After Dark
      New York: John Day. (1931). First. First edition. Illustrated by Raymond Bret-Koch. About fine in good plus dustwrapper with modest chips and tanning on the spine. A wonderfully kooky guide to the Big Apple. Exceptionally scarce, especially in jacket. .

      [Bookseller: Between the Covers- Rare Books, Inc. ABA]

YARDLEY, HERBERT O. - ["THE MOST FAMOUS BOOK ON CRYPTOLOGY".]
        The American Black Chamber.
      Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, (1931). 8vo. Publisher's original black full cloth with title in red to front board and spine. Uncut. 375 pp. + 9 photographic plates, including frontispiece. A bit of sunning to spine and a few very vague spots to front board. Internally nice and clean. With the book-plate of Charles J. Fritz to inside of front board.. First edition of Yardley's highly influential and controversial book on cryptography and The Black Chamber, also known as MI-8. The book has been described as "the most famous book on cryptology ever published". Yardley, who had been working extensively with Japanese codes and code breaking, exposed fundamental flaws in the Japanese system which caused a diplomatic furore between the US and Japan. A member of the Japanese House of Peers said that "The disclosure of this breach of faith committed by the United States Government will doubtless serve as a valuable lesson for the future to Japan in participating in international conferences".Herbert Osborne Yardley, allegedly the most famous cryptologist in history, was a prodigy within cryptology; within a few years he went from being a desk clerk to being head of the Black Chamber, a forerunner of the National Security Agency. As a consequence of the Great Depression, the Black Chamber lost its funding in October 1929, and Yardley found himself without a job and no money, which resulted in the writing of The American Black Chamber. "When his old MI-8 friend, Manly, with whom he had been in contact all during the 1920s, had to turn down his request for a $2,500 loan in the end of January, 1931, Yardley, in desperation, sat down to write what was to become the most famous book on cryptology ever published." (Kahn, pp. 360-1).Despite of The American Black Chamber's controversial contents, Yardley had not broken the law by writing it, as no law existed on the area. It was due to this that rules concerning leakage of Yardley's sort were written into American law. When Yardley a few years late began writing The Chinese Black Chamber, the Roosevelt administration had passed a law which made it illegal to publish any transmission between The United States and any foreign government and as a consequence the book was made classified and first published in 1983."The circumstances of the production of The American Black Chamber, as much as its narrative structure, helped to define the nascent genre of the US spy memoir" (Egerton, Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory, Routledge 1994, 315 p.)"With all its faults and falsehoods, his book had captured the imagination of the public and inspired untold numbers of amateurs to become interested in cryptology. To the extent that the impact of their fresh ideas enriched American cryptology, the credits most go to him." (Kahn, The Code Breakers, New York, 1968, 369 p.).See: David Kahn, The Code Breakers, New York, 1968

      [Bookseller: Lynge & Søn A/S]

WOOLF, Virginia.
        The Waves.
      London: The Hogarth Press, 1931.. First edition, 8vo, 325, (1) pp. Original purple cloth, d.w. designed by Vanessa Bell with some light spots to the spine and lower wrapper, very minor loss to top corners and spine ends, top edge of lower wrapper with some creasing, a very good clean copy. Kirkpatrick A16a.

      [Bookseller: Bow Windows Bookshop, ABA, ILAB]