TIME BANDITS - What were Einstein and Gödel talking about?

[Dover]

TIME BANDITS
by JIM HOLT

What were Einstein and Gödel talking about?
Issue of 2005-02-28

In 1933, with his great scientific discoveries behind him, Albert Einstein came to America. He spent the last twenty-two years of his life in Princeton, New Jersey, where he had been recruited as the star member of the Institute for Advanced Study. Einstein was reasonably content with his new milieu, taking its pretensions in stride. “Princeton is a wonderful piece of earth, and at the same time an exceedingly amusing ceremonial backwater of tiny spindle-shanked demigods,” he observed. His daily routine began with a leisurely walk from his house, at 115 Mercer Street, to his office at the institute. He was by then one of the most famous and, with his distinctive appearance—the whirl of pillow-combed hair, the baggy pants held up by suspenders—most recognizable people in the world.

A decade after arriving in Princeton, Einstein acquired a walking companion, a much younger man who, next to the rumpled Einstein, cut a dapper figure in a white linen suit and matching fedora. The two would talk animatedly in German on their morning amble to the institute and again, later in the day, on their way homeward. The man in the suit may not have been recognized by many townspeople, but Einstein addressed him as a peer, someone who, like him, had single-handedly launched a conceptual revolution. If Einstein had upended our everyday notions about the physical world with his theory of relativity, the younger man, Kurt Gödel, had had a similarly subversive effect on our understanding of the abstract world of mathematics...cont'd

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?050228crat_atlarge

[Lucky Luciano]

1. Thanks for the article!

Right up my alley.

[NationalEnquirer]

2. Great article.

Those Germans have some fine minds, as long as they are applied right.

[JitterbugPerfume]

3. wow thanks

nt

[ChairOne]

4. Not so good on Godel....

In particular, the article failed utter to acknowledge Godel's speficic target in coming up with incompleteness: David Hilbert (the pre-eminient mathematician at the time) and his quest for a decision procedure for the entirety of mathematics.

IIRC in fact, Godel stumbled across incompleteness in the course of actually trying to prove the opposite.

Also, Godel's demonstration that AC is an independent axiom was important enough to deserve mention.

Interesting comparison/contrast between Einstein and Godel tho...

[Swede]

5. Great article.

Thanks for posting this.

[RandomUser]

6. Gödel proves U.S. Constitution dictatorship loophole with math?

According to the article:

So naïve and otherworldly was the great logician that Einstein felt obliged to help look after the practical aspects of his life. One much retailed story concerns Gödel’s decision after the war to become an American citizen. The character witnesses at his hearing were to be Einstein and Oskar Morgenstern, one of the founders of game theory. Gödel took the matter of citizenship with great solemnity, preparing for the exam by making a close study of the United States Constitution. On the eve of the hearing, he called Morgenstern in an agitated state, saying he had found an “inconsistency” in the Constitution, one that could allow a dictatorship to arise. Morgenstern was amused, but he realized that Gödel was serious and urged him not to mention it to the judge, fearing that it would jeopardize Gödel’s citizenship bid. On the short drive to Trenton the next day, with Morgenstern serving as chauffeur, Einstein tried to distract Gödel with jokes. When they arrived at the courthouse, the judge was impressed by Gödel’s eminent witnesses, and he invited the trio into his chambers. After some small talk, he said to Gödel, “Up to now you have held German citizenship.”

No, Gödel corrected, Austrian.

“In any case, it was under an evil dictatorship,” the judge continued. “Fortunately that’s not possible in America.”

“On the contrary, I can prove it is possible!” Gödel exclaimed, and he began describing the constitutional loophole he had descried. But the judge told the examinee that “he needn’t go into that,” and Einstein and Morgenstern succeeded in quieting him down. A few months later, Gödel took his oath of citizenship.

Sounds all too ominous, but I'd like to know the detail that he identified mathematically/logically, so that we know what to watchout for, and whether Bush has made his way towards that loophole yet.

[AlienGirl]

8. Einstein looked after the practical aspects of his life?!

*Einstein* looked after the *practical* aspects of his life?!! How impractical do you have to be that having Einstein manage your practical life is an improvement?!

Tucker (suddenly not feeling so bad about being impractical to the point of near-functionlessness)

[bemildred]

9. I've never really figured out what people are for anyway.

But I can assure you that being "practical" is way overrated.
Mr Goedel was simply a guy who was completely wrapped up in what
was going on in his head. That is very impractical, but it's
a lot of fun (at least for some of us).

[bemildred]

7. Nice piece. Fellow subversives know each other.

Mr. Turing should be included too - we are still trying to
digest the results of their better known investigations - it is
little surprising that their less well known ideas are being ignored.
Between them they utterly destroyed the Newtonian clockwork
universe, and no suitable replacement has been found.