Posted on 12/21/2004 7:47:50 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
I hate it when people pronounce his name "Girdle".
Annoying.
I own a copy of one of Goedels books. I will be prepared to read it in about 200 years if my brain doesn't overheat and melt and run out my ears before then.
This leads me to make the proposal that all philosophy professors should have their fingers broken so they cannot afflict the rest of the world their horrific writing styles.
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.
"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.
Your lack of knowledge about Einstein's worth outside of being a scientist might also be characterized as 'dangerous or stupid'. I give you but one example:
Albert Einstein's letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 2, 1939:
Albert Einstein
Old Grove Road
Nassau Point
Peconic, Long Island
August 2, 1939
F. D. Roosevelt,
President of the United States,
White House
Washington, D. C.
Sir:
Some recent work by E.Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in a manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of this situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations:
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable - through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America - that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium,by which vast amount s of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomena would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, m ight very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.
The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quantities. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.
In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between the administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust with this task a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an inofficial capacity. His task might comprise the following:
a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium or for the United States;
b) to speed up the experimental work,which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University Laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with private persons who are willing to make contrib utions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining the co-operation of industrial aboratories which have the necessary equipment.
I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such an early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsacker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.
Yours very truly,
(Albert Einstein)
For the record (as if anybody's keeping records!), even if I don't respond to each comment posted to me on a thread I start, you can be sure that I've read them all (and all of the others, too). Often I decide not to respond just in order to keep the noise level down; but I always laugh at the jokes (intentional and otherwise).
And with that last, mildly snarky remark (got to keep up appearances), I'll say,
Merry Christmas and best regards to all...
And a very merry Christmas to you and yours.
I wonder if Einstein would have written the letter on Sept 2 1939? The nazis and the communists were allies then and Einstein probably followed the partyline.
Thanks for the ping.
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...
He was forced to leave Europe in 1933, and, after arriving in Princeton, never left there. He became an American citizen in 1940.
He was a gentle man who sought peace and well-being for all, but who also could see clearly enough the nature of the threat posed to the world by Hitler and the Nazis. That is why he agreed to sign the letter posted above by IonImplantGuru.
Didn't Hawking change his mind about time travel a few years back?
Are you referring to Hawking's recent re-canting of his view that material sucked into a black hole could re-emerge into another universe (thus violating the principle of the conservation of information)? Here's a link for that story:
Hawking proves a good sport when it comes to settling bets
The link is to Preskill's webpage, Preskill being the guy who won the bet with Hawking.
You wrote:
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...
Unless we can figure out a way to spin the entire cosmos like a top, we won't be able to use Gödel's solutions of Einstein's field equations to produce a weapon. I found the following using Google (it's by Stephen Speicher and may be found here):
Kurt Goedel was the first to demonstrate the existence of closed timelike curves (CTCs) in an exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity ("An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations of Gravitation," _Reviews of Modern Physics_, 21: pp. 447-450, 1949). Goedel himself interpreted the CTCs as demonstrating that any objective lapse of time is an illusion: "...that for _every_ possible definition of a world time one could travel into regions of the universe _which are passed_ according to that definition. This again shows that to assume an objective lapse of time would lose every justification in these worlds."In Goedel's universe one can travel to the past, and, as Goedel said in one of his later manuscripts, "in whatever way one may [try to] introduce an absolute 'before,' there always exist either temporally incomparable events or cyclically ordered events." It was Goedel's contention, and echoed later by physicists such as Roger Penrose, that our ordinary perceptions of time as past, present, and future is obviated by the very existence of closed timelike curves. The idea being that physics treats time as it does the spatial dimensions, and the "flow of time" is just an illusion. The closed timelike curve in the Goedel universe permits one to travel towards one's causal future, but eventually wind up at one's local past.
Einstein acknowledged Goedel's work here as being
"an important contribution to the general theory of relatvity, especially to the analysis of the concept of time. The problem here involved disturbed me already at the time of the building up of the general theory of relativity, without my having succeeded in clarifying it." [1]And Einstein explicated the issue:
"...and if the series is closed in itself. In that case the distinction 'earlier-later' is abandoned for world-points which lie far apart in the cosmological sense, and those paradoxes, regarding the _direction_ of the causal connection, arise, of which Mr. Goedel has spoken." [2]Like Stephen Hawking, Einstein also questioned Goedel's solution on physical grounds: "It will be interesting to weigh whether these are not to be excluded on physical grounds." And, Hawking says: "This suggests that the solution is not very physical." And, indeed, Goedel's rotating universe was later understood not to be the universe in which we live. However, the Goedel solution is certainly of interest, and one will find it discussed in many advanced texts on relativity (for instance, in Hawking & Ellis, "The Large Scale Structure of Space-time," and Ciufolini & Wheeler, "Gravitation and Inertia").
There are other perspectives from other theorists, but, I think it fair to say that the modern perspective in general relativity is to treat the spacetime manifold as an abstraction within which we analyze in order to make real-world predictions of actual events.
[1] "Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist," Edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, _MJF Books_, p. 687, 1949/1970.
[2] Ibid. p. 688.
You don't get it, do you? How do you think we "defeated" the Soviet Union? In the 1970s and '80s, when the commies were on a roll, it was often asked aloud if the US would be able to survive. And here we are, just a few years later, having waged no war against the foe, yet they're gone and we're Number One.
Even a casual observer must agree that we live in the most improbable of times. Do you think it happened by accident?
</Fiction mode>
I agree with you that deep insight and high achievement in one area does not translate into the same in other areas. Clearly, Einstein was a much better scientist than he was a political observer.
Substitute 'do not translate' for 'does not translate' in the first sentence of the second paragraph of my previous post.
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