Re: Einstein, Heisenberg & Gödel: Relativity, Uncertainty & Incompleteness

[rich]

nice pics, too--place cursor on each of the pics

photos : leopold bloom, gangster , becket

in any case seeing the state of the world I think Pynchon's next book if it
comes will be bursting with that ever-present modern ingredient:  world-wide
despair

old men cannot think of any other, at least the good ones
whisky helps

rich




On 4/29/06, jporter <jp3214 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> And taught by a Jesuit, no less:
>
> http://www2.bc.edu/%7Eanderso/courses/ehg.html
>
> The energy driving the course comes from the profound
> transformations in our understanding of nature and math-
> ematics provided by scientific and mathematical develop-
> ments in the 20th century. The mathematician, John von
> Neumann, writing mid 20th century and capturing a widely
> shared perception, noted the enormous significance of the
> developments the subject of the course:
>
>        ... there have been within the experience of people
>        now living at least three serious crises... There have
>        been two such crises in physics---namely, the concep-
>        tual soul-searching connected with the discovery of
>        relativity and the conceptual difficulties connected
>        with discoveries in quantum theory... The third crisis
>        was in mathematics. It was a very serious conceptual
>         crisis, dealing with rigor and the proper way to carry
>        out a correct mathematical proof. In view of the earlier
>        notions of the absolute rigor of mathematics, it is sur-
>        prising that such a thing could have happened, and
>        even more surprising that it could have happened in
>        these latter days when miracles are not supposed to
>        take place. Yet it did happen.
>
>
> I'm 'almost' certain the course of this road runs through Göttingen.
>
> jody
>
>
>
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