Sunday, April 10, 2011

Bertie Russell and the Incompleteness Theorem (Part II)

Right, where was I? Bertie has just discovered his crazy uncle and a new fear - of going insane.

Ok, so the next big event in our young hero's life is that his grandmother (finally) hires a Maths tutor for him. Mathematics opened a skylight in Bertie's life. For the first time, Bertie came across the idea of proof. In a world that was full of terrors and things that go bang in the night, he realised that if something is true, you should be able to demonstrate that it is true. And thereafter you need not agonise over it any more - you've shown it to be true. Equally, if something is untrue, you should be able to disprove it and move on.

Of course the other way in which Mathematics changed Bertie's life was that it soon became clear that he was very good at it...and he was only to get better!

At that point we will leave Bertie for a few years. He grew up in more or less the ordinary way, eventually went off to university at Trinity College, Cambridge where he steadily demonstrated himself to be more and more brilliant.


But as Bertie found out more about Mathematics, something began to worry him. Everything was so logical, up to a certain point. Theorems built on theorems. Propositions were proved or disproved. Yet something was still missing. The whole edifice of Mathematics was built on axioms. In one way or another, something foundational had to be assumed.

Given that in some ways Bertie's happiness and sanity depended on the certainties of Mathematics, he did not take kindly to this, and quickly set about trying to remedy this foundational problem in the field. Between a marriage (begun and ended), several affairs and multiple academic papers; conferences and international unrest; Bertie attacked the problem with vigour. Together with his great friend Arthur Whitehead he wrote a massive tome on the fundamental principles of Mathematics. He became extremely famous. But he still couldn't settle the foundations of Mathematics to his own satisfaction.



And then something really remarkable happened. A young Mathematician called Kurt Gödel proved what became known as the Incompleteness Theorems. One (and only one) of the shattering implications of these theorems is this: there will always exist some things that are true, but not provable. And there will always exist some things that are untrue, but not disprovable. Another way of saying this is that is impossible to have an entirely internally consistent set of axioms for Mathematics.

Wait...just think about that for a second...


Can you imagine how devastating this must have been? Bertie's life goal was crushed in one (or two) little theorems...

We will leave Bertie at this point. As a brief postscript, I am happy to report that Bertie survived this setback and went on to make many more contributions to Mathematics, Philosophy and even politics (particularly as a pacifist during both World Wars).

I leave you with the thought of the Incompleteness Theorems.

May they keep you awake at night.

They truly are remarkable.

As was Bertrand Russell.

2 comments:

  1. hmmm. Mystical maths? or metaphysical maths, at any rate

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  2. Maths is metaphysical by definition...maybe more towards the mystical side! In my interpretation of the story anyway!!! I wonder what happened to the uncle. Probably nothing edifying.

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