Gödel and Einstein: Friendship and Relativity

The Chronicle Review ^ | December 17, 2004 | Palle Yourgrau

[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]

Gödel and Einstein:

[snarks_when_bored]

Google collection of images of Gödel:

Gödel photos

[RadioAstronomer]

Thanks for the ping. :-)

[snarks_when_bored]

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

Thanks.

[snarks_when_bored]

Glad to do it, bud. The headline screw-up is aggravating, but maybe the Mod can fix it.

[BykrBayb]

Was that during their Vaudeville days?

[snarks_when_bored]

Looks like it, huh? (laugh)

[BykrBayb]

Gödel and Einstein together again for the first time.

[snarks_when_bored]

An interesting fact about Gödel (as I recall without fact-checking): he married a cabaret girl. It was quite scandalous at the time.

[BykrBayb]

I saw that movie. The Blue Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

[snarks_when_bored]

Probably true to life at that time.

[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....

[PatrickHenry]

Science Ping!

This is an elite subset of the Evolution ping list.

See the list's description in my freeper homepage. Then FReepmail me to be added or dropped.

[grey_whiskers]

Nice photo, snarks!

(...but I can't help but be reminded of the Bartles & James wine-cooler geezers on the porch.)

[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.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[PatrickHenry]

Einstein was not a "socialist" he was Communist ...

We had a long-ago thread on this, with a copy of his essay on the subject:
Why Socialism? (Albert Einstein).