"All Cretans are liars", said Epimenides, a Cretan. But this means that his statement must be a lie too. But then it is false that Cretans are liars and the statement must be true. So what now?
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proved that no formal mathematical system can demonstrate every mathematical truth, is a landmark of modern thought. It's a simple but profound statement, but the ...
At 24, Kurt Gödel established himself as perhaps the greatest logician of the 20th century. Standing against the intellectual currents of his time, he unveiled two theorems in 1930 showing that a ...
Last week I explained how a then 25-year-old logician, Kurt Gödel, overturned a basic assumption of many mathematicians in the early 20th century. Even as experts were building a seemingly firm ...
The genius logician Kurt Gödel gave his name to his famous Incompleteness Theorems, which in the 1930s helped define the limits of both logic and mathematics. It might be thought that the ...
Rebecca Goldstein, in her absorbing intellectual biography Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, writes that as an undergraduate, “Gödel fell in love with Platonism.” (She also ...
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - APRIL 19: A detailed view of the blackboard with theoretical physics equations in chalk by Alberto Ramos, Theoretical Physics Fellow and visitor, Antonio Gonzalez-Arroyo from the ...