It is one thing to know that a system must be incomplete and contain contradictions. It is quite another to actually spot some contradictions. Thus arithmetic must have contradictions but nobody has spotted any yet. Apparently Godel spotted at least one in the US Constitution, but I do not know what it or they are or were. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Monday, May 24, 1999 10:18 AM Subject: incompleteness theorem (was: gun control)
>At 06:18 PM 5/21/99 -0400, Barkely Rosser wrote:
>> I just read both an article in _Scientific American_
>>and a book review in _Mathematical Intelligencer_ on
>>a new biography of the mathematical logician, Kurt
>>Godel, he of the famous Incompleteness Theorem.
>>Apparently when he was examined to become a US
>>citizen in the late 1940s (Albert Einstein and Oskar
>>Morgenstern were present to shepherd the extreme
>>eccentric genius through), they had to repress him from
>>making an extended speech about contradictions in the
>>US constitution that he perceived when the examining
>>judge asked him what he thought of that particular document.
>
>
>That is somewhat strange. Isn't it what his incompleteness theorem would
>predict? That is, it is impossible to construct a logically coherent
>system a la constitional law (i.e. you would find mutually contradicting
>statements or principles that are logically derived from the "axioms" i.e.
>constitutional law; btw. Kenneth Arrow demonstrated that contradiction in
>the rat choice model of social organization in a more systematic way).
>
>In other words, such contradictions are old news, so why ranting about
>them, and piss the crypto nazis at the INS. I was stupid enough to do that
>(i.e. refused to agree to serve in the US Army on ethical grounds) - and
>what followed warrants a separate story.
>
>wojtek
>
>