world. The physics community was likewise poised at the turn of the
twentieth century, seeking a way out of the ultraviolet catastrophe—the
prediction that a perfectly black object in thermal equilibrium would
emit radiation with infinite power.
An equally challenging puzzle confronted social scientists a relatively
short while ago. The dictatorships that had strangled Germany, Italy, and
Japan had been overthrown as a result of the Second World War. With de-
mocracies emerging throughout the world, the social scientists of the day
were eagerly continuing a quest begun two centuries previously, the search
for the ideal method of translating the votes of individuals into the wishes
of the society.
All these efforts would lead to related dramatic discoveries—that there
are some things we cannot know, some things we cannot do, and some
goals we cannot achieve. Possibly some mathematician will pick up the
Clay millennium jackpot by discovering that there is no perfect way to
create schedules, and we’ll just have to resign ourselves to hearing that
our car isn’t ready when we call the garage to inquire if we can pick it up.
Prologue 9