• Question: Did Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems have any implications to practical science?

    Asked by freddie to Adam, Rob, Sheila, Suzie on 23 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Robert Simpson

      Robert Simpson answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      I think what Gödel said boils down to the idea that whatever system of logic you use to talk about the world – it is always possible for things to be true, but not provable by that system. So 2 and 2 make 4 but you might not be able to prove it using logic or maths – you can’t show thats its false either of course. I suppose this shows us that there are limits to how we describe the world and we have to remember that things may happen outside of the real of mathematics.

      Practical implications? Not sure really. It seems difficult to be able to apply it to the real world. Any ideas?

    • Photo: Suzie Sheehy

      Suzie Sheehy answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      I’m not sure I ever learned Godel’s incompleteness theorem so don’t feel qualified to answer this one, sorry Freddie!

    • Photo: Sheila Kanani

      Sheila Kanani answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      I’m not sure! I guess the theorems were about mathmatical logic, which we do need in practical science, and it is true that while you can sometimes prove something using maths, often you can disprove it using maths too. The more answers there are, the more questions there are too! 😀

    • Photo: Adam Tuff

      Adam Tuff answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      I had to google it, I’ve never encountered this Gödel’s Theorems before! I don’t know anything about it – sorry dude 🙁 Being an experimentalist, I know of nothing that can measure systems like this, so I think this problem might only exist in the realm of theoretical physics.

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