[snarks_when_bored]

Kurt Gödel isn't nearly as well known as Einstein and Heisenberg, but, as the article points out, he was the greatest logician of all time. Gödel's greatest achievement, his Incompleteness Theorem, shows (roughly) that any logical system strong enough to contain arithmetic will also contain statements the truth of which can be known, but not proved using only the axioms of the given logical system.

The joke is that Gödel proved that mathematicians will always have work, because any logical system within which they work will contain statements that require new, stronger logical systems to prove, and of course somebody's got to come up with those new, stronger logical systems and the proofs they allow...but then the process starts over again within the new systems, and so on ad infinitum (or at least until the cosmos disappears)!

[snarks_when_bored]

Ping.

[snarks_when_bored]

Google collection of images of Gödel:

Gödel photos

[snarks_when_bored]

HTML in headlines doesn't parse, I see. Can you fix the headline by changing the first word to Godel ?

Thanks.

[JoJo Gunn]

....and so on ad infinitum....

When I was a kid I looked at graphics of atoms in textbooks, and wondered about whether atoms were solar systems, or whether protons or neutrons were Universes, was the Earth a proton, etc. Maybe this whole Universe is just boring down the tunnel of an atom smasher somewhere....

[grey_whiskers]

I can hardly wait for the book!
May I suggest a dramatization of it?

We could call it Waiting for Gödel.

(Ducks away quickly to avoid the hail of well-aimed vegetables.)

[rcocean]

Einstein was not a "socialist" he was Communist while in Germany & remained a communist symp while living in the US. Which isn't surprising since his wife was a communist party member who whole life.

The man may have been a great scientist but his views on life and politics were either dangerous or stupid.

[fishtank]

I hate it when people pronounce his name "Girdle".

Annoying.

[PatrickHenry]

Good article, but it's lost in today's flood of crevo threads. I've got to abandon watching this one. If something comes up, I hope I'll get pinged.

[contemplator]

"Incompleteness Theorem, shows (roughly) that any logical system strong enough to contain arithmetic will also contain statements the truth of which can be known, but not proved using only the axioms of the given logical system. "

This theorem shows what has become the primary hindrance to widespread acceptance of String Theory. That is that we currently have no way of proving it.

[GOPJ]

Didn't Hawking change his mind about time travel a few years back? Also, doesn't the following sound like a weapon in waiting?

If Einstein succeeded in transforming time into space, Gödel would perform a trick yet more magical: He would make time disappear. ..it turned out that the space-time structure is so greatly warped or curved by the distribution of matter that there exist timelike, future-directed paths...

[snarks_when_bored]

An interesting discussion of Einstein and Gödel in The New Yorker, incorporated into another thread:

Time Bandits - What were Einstein and Gödel talking about?