----- Original Message ----- From: "Miles Jackson" <cqmv at pdx.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 6:20 PM Subject: RE: Why we will need lawyers anyway
>
>
> On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>
> > >
> > >
> > > Godel assures us that no system of laws can be perfect, so lawyers will
> > >always be necessary. Wake up.
> > >
> > That's not what Goedel showed, and his theorem has no relevance to law or
> > political or legal philosophy or practice. What he showed was that
> > arithmetic is incomplete, i.e., that in any formal system powerful enough to
> > express arithmetic, there is at least one true proposition not provable
> > within that system. jks
> >
>
> Yeah, what's this irritating tendency to bring up Godel in discussions
> of social and/or political activities? It's almost as bad as chaos theory
> (don't get me started on that one).
>
> Miles
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Why not? This is a list for looking at the political implications for developments in the natural and social sciences so what's there to be afraid of in trying use chaos theory to develop analyses of the current political economy? Or are we to let the financiers on Wall Street and elsewhere have an epistemic monopoly on such tools as they continue to fuck up the lives of millions of people?
Ian