[snarks_when_bored]

For more on Kurt Gödel, his work and his friendship with Einstein, see the following threads:

GÖDEL AND THE NATURE OF MATHEMATICAL TRUTH [6.8.05] - A Talk with Rebecca Goldstein

Truth, Incompleteness and the Gödelian Way

Gödel and Einstein: Friendship and Relativity

[snarks_when_bored]

Ping

[The_Reader_David]

It's too long to slog through this late at night, but since the picture of Einstein and Goedel was included, I thought I'd pass on a wonderful Einstein/Goedel anecdote which is particularly a propos on FR.

It seems that Goedel was so socially inept (in the way mathematicians often are--lost in thought when other folks would be attending to present company, given to assuming that everyone cares about their work, and the like) that Einstein took it on himself to 'look after him' (rather remarkable since theoretical physicists tend to be the same way).

One day during the 1952 presidential campaign, Einstein (who like all 'good' intellectuals was a socialist, and backing Stevenson) came storming into the tea room at the IAS shouting "Goedel's gone completely crazy! He's voting for Eisenhower!"

(I want to retouch a photo of Goedel to add an "I like Ike" button and put it up in my department, since Ike hailed from the part of Kansas that K-State draws most of its students from.)

[the_Watchman]

I read "Gödel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Golden Braid" in the early 1980's while my formal math education was still "fresh". Hofstadter had packed together a lot of interesting material on music, art, philosophy, language, math, artificial intelligence, and issues of computability.

In the first third of the book he made a proposition which he bothered to put in italics. I immediately highlighted it. Hofstadter had not explained Godel's proof, but he was investigating the philosophical implication of a proof that there could be no mathematically complete system. He stated [from my memory] "It's as if the concept of TRUTH is higher than the concept of PROVABILITY". I was immediately reminded of the assertion of Jesus Christ: I am the way the TRUTH and the life. On the other hand, Jesus spent no energy attempting to "prove" his identity to anyone.

[wideminded]

Apparently Gödel starved himself to death. This interests me as there are people with eating disorders in my family (both female and male), and I don't believe that the true origin of these illnesses has been discovered. There clearly is some connection with obsessive personality.

[snarks_when_bored]

I suppose it's worth noting that Dr. Verena Huber-Dyson is the wife of famed physicist and author, Freeman Dyson, and the mother of author and adventurer, George Dyson, and of 'Digital Diva', Esther Dyson.

[sauropod]

mark

[headsonpikes]

Thanks for posting this. It brought back pleasant academic memories of two and three student seminar courses on various logico-philosophical topics. It was a sunny time. ;^)

[TX Bluebonnet]

Cool - bookmark to read later

[RATkiller]

Bookmark

[IslandJeff]

Bookmark

[betty boop]

Once language, axioms and rules are fixed, a formalism is pinned down and there is no tampering with the concept of proof. That seems pretty straightforward. But the question is: what are we talking about in that language, where do the axioms come from, what justifies the rules of inference? We are limited creatures, finite beings with a finite amount of temporal and spatial reach allotted to us. The mind is an unfathomable tool; it projects and imagines. It can conceive of unending processes, it can remember extinct events and it can create the weirdest gadgets. Does it create mathematical objects, rules and axioms out of the blue? Not likely. And surely not by deliberate consensus, just think of the debates, controversies and battles we would be facing if anybody could arbitrarily choose how to see the world — and try to impose this view on her fellow beings. I believe that we are basically wired to perceive and handle the world according to the blueprint of mathematics. With slight variations; careful people won't accept the law of the excluded middle all across the board, common sense will demand constructive existence proofs, others will balk at every use of the axiom of choice, a few deny the Uncountable and some will insist on Finitism. But the squirrels scurrying along my telephone line may well be operating according to a totally different notion of the world although we perceive them as navigating according to the laws of our geometry.

What a wonderful, thought-provoking post, snarks! Thank you so very much!

[Cboldt]

*bump*

[Tench_Coxe]

Bookmarked for perusal.

[Faraday]

bump

[Blind Eye Jones]

I like the picture of Godel and Einstein. It reminds me of the Frankenstein vs. Einstein debates at Princeton in the late 30s. Frankenstein was coming off a few hit horror films with Dracula and bought his way into Princeton. The high point was a debate he had with Einstein at the student union hall. Einstein said, "pi r2" and Frankenstein rebutted with, "No! Pie are round!" Anyway, it caused a big stir and I think they chased him back to the dorm with pitchforks and torches.

[Allan]

More Godel.

I can't tell you
whether it is interesting
or not
since I haven't had time
to read it.

[aculeus]

Please don't publish articles like this.

Everyone "knows" FR is the home of knuckle-dragging ideologues who want to destroy science.

(/sarcasm)