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integers, or natural numbers? Gödel's incompleteness theorem says natural numbers.
-- John Joseph Bachir 23 sept 2004 (after taking a formal language and automata exam...)
Was Kurt really Austrian-born? I think this will always be problematic. You could probably also say he was Czech-born or Austro-Hungarian-born. As far as I know Brunn was at that time part of Austria which was in turn part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. I'm not sure how Czech or Austrian the parents of Kurt were (or considered themselves) but the fact that he was sent to a German-speaking school may be a hint. Anyway, if you think you have good arguments to change this, please do. :-)
-- Jan Hidders July 10 2001
I don't know German very well but is Der Herr Warum correct ?
--
Kpjas
I speak a little German, (I watched a lot of Sesamstrasse as a child :-)) and it is certainly correct. You can check for yourself:
-- JanHidders
What is Goedel Number ? Taw
A Goedel numbering is a scheme (with certain nice properties) which associates logical formulas with numbers, so that instead of talking about strings like "(phi or psi) -> tau " you could talk about numbers that prepresent them instead. Once a particular Goedel numbering is fixed, a Goedel number of a particular logical formula/statement is the natural number that represents it according to the numbering. Why? -- AV
Because some page on wiki (Light Bulb Jokes) has link named Goedel Number that points to Kurt Godel page. Taw
The links would best point to Gödel's incompleteness theorem where the concept is explained. Or we could write a separate article. --AxelBoldt
I'd support a separate article, it will make linking easier, and sometime somebody may want to talk about Godel numbers without getting into the whole incompleteness theorem. Perhaps the Godel Number page could just be a semi-short definition with links to Kurt Godel, and to the Incompleteness theorem, that way if there are other uses for Godel numbers than the proof of the incompleteness theorem we could have links to those pages as well. It certianly seems like there should be other uses for Godel numbers, but this is not my area and I don't really know anything about them... MRC
You're right, there're other uses, although they may be too advanced for Wikipedia. I agree that it should be a (short) article on its own. -- AV
That comment about Godel having Asperger's syndrome in uncited and almost certainly wrong... Asperger's syndrome does not cause paranoid delusions. I don't know that Godel was ever diagnosed with anything, but paranoid schizophrenia seems more likely a culprit than Aspergers 71.229.63.50 20:27, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
this is a very fascinating aspect of Godel that has been largely overlooked. A great scholar should create a wikipedia entry on these criticisms and then link this part of Godel's bio to it.
As I translated the article (and compared it to other good articles) I noticed there is some "confusion" in it´s structure. Almost all of the information about his work is included in the section of his life. The article may benefit from being splitted in one section for his life, and one separate section about his works, wich is the pattern followed in most other entries.-- Loyan ( talk) 06:28, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
US CITIZENSHIP INTERVIEW, FREE THINKER, BEGINNERS GUIDE After a search on ENIAC I came to Neumann then Godel on Wikipedia.
During the immigration interview Godel must have been attempting to answer as truthfully as possible. He was indicating what we know to be true today. A president could create a dictatorship akin to NAZI Germany (akin to Mugabe in the former Rhodesia).
Key was his openness, which is what free thinkers do. Clearly Godel was not concerned with any form of "Restraint". I would like to see Godel for beginners type links as I am fascinated now. The Chain here is excellent (thank you all) Many people when subjected to official process never question it, clearly Godel Did, with the comment that potentially elections and presidential control would be possible, after all look at elections in Zimbabwe, the US was nearly the same when Dubbyah was elected. Kurt was not wrong! I hope his spirit is reading over my shoulder as I type this wiki
I dont know if his mother was jewish, but Muzel Tov / God Bless anyway
Kind Regards dsm@kesgrave.net
I have started adding citations for the biographical information. I've just finished a novel centering on a part of Gödel's work, which I carefully researched (the novel took me 5 years to write, 3 of them full-time). So I'm freshly familiar with the sources.
This article is fairly accurate and that, while it is unsourced, I believe most of the facts in it can be sourced, many others can be sourced with slight changes, and very few are likely to prove unsourceable.
Adding sources to a text you've written is almost as hard as writing it. Adding sources to text that others have written may be harder. In particular, there's the question of how to deal with material you can't source. Editors are supposed to be bold, but assuming something is unsourced just because I don't know of a source for it is bolder than I care to be. I will follow this procedure:
I'll mark text I can't source like this citation needed. In a separate section on this talk page, I'll explain the nature of my problem. For example, I might not believe the "fact" has a source. Or I might suspect that it does, but be unable to find it. If I get no feedback, I'll use my best judgment.
My guidelines for sources: I'll be fussy about sources, but I think properly so. In researching Gödel time and again I'd read the 36th slightly different version of the same "fact" about Gödel. When I was in Grad School, Gödel was still alive and much talked about. None of what I was told can be sourced and I suspect all of it was untrue. Therefore:
1. I use secondary sources only where they were carefully edited from a biographical standpoint. This excludes even otherwise carefully edited textbooks as evidence. It also excludes most biographical treatments of Gödel. Among the secondary sources, I have learned to trust only Dawson 1997 (Gödel's definitive biography) and the apparatus in Gödel's Collected Works .
2. Mathematicians may be lousy biographers, but they tend to be good witnesses. I regard any primary source as good evidence for what the author witnessed. So, for example, Hao Wang's books are extremely important sources because he knew Gödel well. But Hao Wang also included a lot of other material. I treat as evidence what Wang personally witnessed, and what he has a source for. I discount everything else. -- Jeffreykegler ( talk) 15:56, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
As it stands, the article states in its introduction, "...Kurt Gödel was perhaps the greatest logician of the 20th century and one of the three greatest logicians of all time with Aristotle and Frege..."
I find this statement astounding. I am not aware that his work, or even his analysis of mathematically incomplete systems, raised him to the ranks of one of the "three greatest logicians of all time", or even the greatest in the last century ( List_of_logicians). Can we have some credible citation for this, or discussion? FT2 18:33, August 28, 2005 (UTC)
I suppose people talk about mathematical logic. Mathematical logic is a well established area of Mathematics. Gödel was probably the greatest mathematical logician of all times. And he did not just stumble about one important discovery. He produced most fundamental work in all areas of mathematical logic. (Even more fundamental than the popular incompleteness thm is the completeness thm, he showed fundamental results about recursion theory, intuitionism and set theory as well.) Another question is his relevance or "greatness" in philosophy (in particular philosophical logic or philosophy of Mathematics). I cannot comment on this. 131.130.190.55 22:02, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
The statement that Gödel was "the greatest logician since Aristotle" is by John von Neumann, as reported by Herman Goldstine in The computer from Pascal to von Neumann. Eubulide 18:36, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm removing the following from the main page as POV:
However, Godel's most revolutionary revision of everyday views of our world, though never substantially popularized--and still predominately rebuffed by the scientific community--was his mathematical proof that the past retains an accessible location in the physical world [to which a space ship can travel at the speed of light.] While the physics community largely acknowledged Godel's proof as valid, it still engages in attempts to invalidate Godel's shocking conclusion. One example is, for instance, in Stephen Hawking's "chronology projection conjecture," which is specifically designed to set aside Godel's revision of our world view--a postulate which nevertheless acknowledges the seriousness of Godel's challenge. In the words of author Palle Yourgrau, while Albert Einstein turned time into space, Godel "made time disappear." [Source-- A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein, Palle Yourgrau, Basic Books, 2005.] Godel's mathematical time proof seems, in fact, somewhat consistent with recent affirmation of dark matter in the universe and the resulting implication that our universe is merely a surface fragment of a larger universe many billions and trillions of times the size of our own. To this day, the man on the street has barely any awareness of Godel's revolutionary proof of the perfect physical endurance of "past" events, even while nearly all educated persons are quite aware of the time-warping relativity theories of Godel's constant Princeton walking companion (Einstein)--from which Godel's time proof emanated. His time proof has therefore achieved that distinctive status accorded only to the most surperlative and disturbing of scientific achievements: to be resolutely ignored.
Apart from being biased it also gives disproportionate attention to a subject that seems very minor. If there needs to be anything on this subject in the article I suggest something like:
"Gödel also found a solution to Einstein's field equations, the Gödel metric." -- Tengfred 14:07, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know what Gödel meant could constitute the framework for a "legal dictatorship" in the US? Marxmax 11:23, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
In the section on psychological disorder it is claimed that Gödel "received an anxiety neurosis" three or four years before suffering from rheumatic fever. Since the latter happend when he was six or seven, he would have been three when he had neurosis. This sounds very unlikely: can we have a reference for that information? Similarly, reference is needed for the assertion that he may have had paranoid schizophrenia. Eubulide 19:10, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
According to the article, after moving to Princeton in March 1940,
Gödel very quickly resumed his mathematical work. In 1940, he published his work Consistency of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum-hypothesis with the axioms of set theory which is a classic of modern mathematics.
An article by Gödel with the title "The consistency of the axiom of choice and of the generalized continuum-hypothesis with the axioms of set theory" was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America already in December 1938 (Volume 24, issue 12, pp. 556–557). Lecture notes with the title "The Consistency of the Continuum Hypothesis" were published in September 1940 in the Princeton series Annals of Mathematical Studies. Is there some confusion here? -- Lambiam 12:04, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
I've edited this rather heavily, and re-sourced it. I did considerable research on this story for my novel, and read many different versions of it. It's clearly turned into a legend.
The only solid basis for this story is Morgenstern's diary entry, which is cryptic and unsatisfying. Every reteller fleshes the story out considerably, usually with dialogue and narrative of their own invention. The only careful account is in Gödel's scholarly biography, by Dawson. Dawson interviewed Morgenstern's widow to flesh out the story. She wasn't there, so what she says is hearsay and Dawson normally doesn't use that kind of source. Dawson was not willing to simply let this story disappear as unsourceable.
Dawson is the most careful source for this story. All other versions are based on Morgenstern, Dawson and things people heard in the 30th retelling in the faculty lounge. For Wikipedia's purposes, I think it best to stick to what's in Dawson and I have edited accordingly.
In my novel, I retell this story with some dialogue and incident of my own invention. I can do that there, because it's fiction.
-- Jeffreykegler ( talk) 06:29, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
See http://www.jstor.org/pss/2251910 See "The Godel Formula: Some Reservations", by Richard Butrick, 1965, Oxford University Press. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.170.8 ( talk) 09:38, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
In the article on David Hilbert, in note 16, Godel gives the Goldbach and Fermat problems as undecidables. Since then, Wiles has been said to have decided and proved the Fermat problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.137.170.8 ( talk) 09:33, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
I went through the article and did some structural cleanup and I think it flows much better now. I relocated the discussions about Einstein and US citizenship into the main "Life" section. I'm not that happy with the section heading "The mid 1930's: further work and visits to the USA" but it's the best I could come up with. Please improve if you can. Manning ( talk) 03:41, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
The link in the reference about this show has gone bad. Here is another link that still works: [3]. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 00:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm native German speaker and to me the pronunciation of Kurt [kʊɐ̯t] seems to be inaccurate. In my option the correct standard German pronunciation is [kʊʁt], whereas [kʊɐ̯t] is more Northern German dialect. Because I'm not that familiar with the IPA I would like to read a second opinion. -- PyroPi ( talk) 06:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
What religion was Godel? He clearly spent some time and effort on proving God's existence (well, beyond reasonable doubt according to the related wiki : ), but what religion was he? -- MrASingh 21:33, 14 Feb 2006 (UTC)
Most sources indicate that he was some sort of unchurched Christian. I know that his wife said that although he didn't attend church, he was still religious and read the Bible in bed every Sunday morning. 76.64.9.151 ( talk) 07:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
I changed things in the article to indicate he is a theist but removed information suggesting he was a Christian. The currently cited sources in this and related articles only appear to support him as a theist. Being baptized as a Christian does not mean you should be classified as one.
Lonjers (
talk)
07:32, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
It's a bit more reasonable to conclude that he was a Christian if he was baptized as such and sources indicated he was, rather than to automatically assume he wasn't just because. Regardless, I'm not sure what he believed, nor do I find it that important. 98.198.83.12 ( talk) 16:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
Now that the commons photo has been deleted, on the grounds that it was a copy of the fair-use photo and we weren't sure if the Oberwolfach folks were entitled to release it, can we please have the fair-use photo back? -- Trovatore ( talk) 22:49, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
While the article mentions Gödel's use of a shorthand, it does not mention why this is a big issue. I happened to be at IAS in 1982 and 1983, and remember talking to Dawson. The biggest problem he initially faced was figuring out the shorthand system Gödel used; first, what system it was, and then all of the idiosyncratic changes/uses Gödel made to it (typical of people using shorthand). It would be worth checking with Dawson on this point: but I suspect that this is why his notebooks have never been seen and understood by many people much less published. To read Gödel's personal papers, you have penetrate what is in effect a serious (somewhat personal) code, based on a shorthand system that hasn't been in widespread use for a century. They certainly aren't just written notes that could be typeset and published as is, and in original form, they might as well be Sanscrit. JimGettys ( talk) 18:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
-- Jeffreykegler ( talk) 04:55, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
The article reports that "Economist Oskar Morgenstern recounts that toward the end of his life Einstein confided that his 'own work no longer meant much, that he came to the Institute merely…to have the privilege of walking home with Gödel.'" A psychologist who knows people might suggest that this was merely a case of an old man who wanted to have a walking buddy who shared his native language ("someone to talk to"). Einstein spoke German throughout his life, even on his deathbed. Lestrade ( talk) 21:48, 22 January 2011 (UTC)Lestrade
The whole 'religious views' section was recently removed. See this edit. They are notable, I think, and it was well-written. Furthermore, it is consistent, because many scientists and other notable people have a section on this matter. This shouldn't have been done without discussion. I'm adding it back. -- Epitectus ( talk) 17:56, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest was declined. The reviewer would like to request the editor with a COI attempt to discuss with editors engaged in the subject-area first. |
Please add the following fact to the "Religious Views" section: Gödel said about Islam: "I like Islam, it is consistent [or consequential] idea of religion and open-minded". [1]
Such a piece of information about Godel should be included because: 1. The section is titled "Religious views", so it is supposed to (and should) include all what is known about Godel's relationship with religion(s). Things like his beliefs and declared opinions.
2. Godel's statement above (that we request to add) is an explicit statement about a specific religion. There is no doubt that the above statement must be classified as a Religious View.
It follows that the statement above (for article's completeness) should be added. People have the right to know.
PS: It happened many times that the above statement of Godel was added then deleted for flimsy reasons (posted on the Talk page). Such a statement can't be classified as Trivia because Godel paid much time and effort for philosophical and religious thinking (see Wang 1996).— Preceding unsigned comment added by Koshtomar ( talk • contribs) 08:30, 10 October 2013
Based on the patten of multiple IP addresses making the same revert, but none of them have used the talk page of the article to respond in the section above where it was briefly discussed. I have semi-protected the page for a week. I will keep an eye on it. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 10:42, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
I've now semi-protected the page for a month. Paul August ☎ 00:16, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Regardless of the subjective importance of Godel's quote for each individual, it is a fact (piece of information) that SHOULD be included when talking about Godel's religious views. Godel's statement about Islam is very particular and is definitely a Religious point of View. Semi-protecting the page for a MONTH, with the quote DELETED, wasn't expected from Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.123.250.63 ( talk) 18:45, 10 October 2013 (UTC)
Dear Editors, if you encourage free thinking and respect that people has the right to know, Godel's quote about Islam should be added again (especially when the other quote describing religion(s) in general is present. Else, the religious views section is providing misleading information about Godel's religious views). Also it is remarkable that Godel's quote was not to offend anyone, while removing it is disrespecting to muslims and to Godel himself. The page needs semi-protection with Godel's quote included. We shouldn't allow an obnoxious sick fanatic (sorry for being harsh but that's the ugly truth) to disturb people's right of knowledge. The opinion of Godel, such an influential mathematician and philosopher, is really interesting (not a little) and encourages further thinking about Islam. (Influential to the extent that makes fanatics afraid to reveal truth). Let's open our minds.
According to the article, Gödel claimed that Islam "is a consistent idea of religion and open-minded." What did he mean by "open-minded"? I thought that Islam was intolerant of other religions. Lestrade ( talk) 16:25, 2 August 2010 (UTC)Lestrade
Someone's been reading their neocon propaganda! GeneCallahan ( talk) 16:26, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Damn. Your bias towards Islam is so appalling and disgusting. You have no idea about Islam and all you do is envelop Islam with your prejudiced hatred which you have caught as a disease because of your western heritage of the hateful christian orientalists. Get your head out of the sand and learn something. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.153.56.156 ( talk) 00:12, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
No need of an exaggerated mention of islam in this article; he was not speaking of his own religious beliefs in that comment. Whether what he said was true or not, whether he was sane or not, the nature of islam, & c., are not issues for discussion here. Karnan ( talk) 19:27, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
In reply to all comments: Godel, the man of consistency, praised Islam that way(according to the witness of Wang who was a skeptic). So, it is natural to mention his say when talking about his religious views. Regardless of being "paranoid" or "peculiar" and regardless of the "zero" weight(30 pages chapter), we shouldn't hide something the peculiar paranoid man said as a view concerning religion. What's the exaggeration here? The man was known to be so cautious, believing in Libenitz principle of sufficient reason, his Ontological proof, letters to his mother and his comments about the afterlife all are strong indications that he had deeply thought about religion. Mohammadanism! When a man like Godel wants to know about Islam, most probably he reads a translation of Qur'an. Islam is Qur'an. Islam has two main principles which are 1.The existence of a God and only one God; 2.There is an afterlife (Things that Godel realized by contemplation). The majority of what is alleged to be from Islam or about Mohammad as a person is a result of opinions and different understandings of what is called "Hadith" which were firstly collected nearly two centuries after Mohammad's death. This makes these information uncertain. In the same book [2] p.316, Godel said: Religions are, for the most part, bad -- but religion is not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.232.187.56 ( talk) 18:35, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
Whatever you think, you have no reason to delete the quote. If that was said about any other religion, I doubt that you will have the same attitude. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.34.198.247 ( talk) 12:53, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I added Godel's quote about Islam again. It should be included and there is no need to remove it. If someone has a serious occult reason that the quote shouldn't be included, then he/she should tell us on the talk page about that, and to get an obvious agreement, before deleting it and deprecating people's right for knowing. The principle is to make information available, not to hide it or to make it incomplete. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koshtomar ( talk • contribs) 14:58, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
I can't believe that there is still someone wanting to hide that quote. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.202.15.211 ( talk) 17:03, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Towards tolerance promotion, it worth to mention here that, in Qoran, all Abrahamic religions are in fact one religion called Islam (See for example The Qoran, surat Al Emran آل عمران verses 19, 67, 84). Qoran defends the idea that Islam (or equivalently, Christianity or Judaism) claimed the same principles, and clarifies that proposed differences are results of human prejudices including misunderstanding, misrepresentation and miscopying (intended and casual). That seems what Godel realized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.202.15.211 ( talk) 18:24, 4 April 2014 (UTC) Note that not only Qoran adopted such a unifying perspective, but also the famous atheist R. Dawkins in his celebrated "The God Delusion" dealt with all the Abrahamic religions as one religion (Christianity). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.202.15.211 ( talk) 18:37, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
The English version states Gödel became an Austrian citizen at age 23. The German version says "1923 nahm Gödel die österreichische Staatsbürgerschaft an". Both versions say he was born in 1906. This is inconsistent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.110.29.67 ( talk) 20:38, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
Is this a WP:ENGVAR issue or a WP:COMMONALITY issue? Or just a general don't-make-useless-changes consideration?
In the US, "proved" and "proven" are about equally good when used for the passive or for the present perfect tense ("proven" is required when used as an adjective). If UK readers have a strong preference for "proven" and US readers are neutral, then maybe we should consider going with "proven" on COMMONALITY grounds. -- Trovatore ( talk) 19:27, 28 March 2016 (UTC)
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In the article we have
In 1934 Gödel gave a series of lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, entitled On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems. Stephen Kleene, who had just completed his PhD at Princeton, took notes of these lectures that have been subsequently published.
But in A to Z of Mathematicians by Tucker McElroy, Infobase Publishing, May 14, 2014 page 120
In 1933 he visited the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (a mathematical think tank affiliated with Princeton University), where he would spend increasing amounts of time as the political situation in Europe deteriorated. Godel also suffered from mental depression, and he stayed in a sanatorium in Europe in 1934 after a nervous breakdown
Where the article statement comes from?-- Vujkovica brdo ( talk) 12:50, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
This so-called English pronunciation IS nonsense. RickK | Talk 07:32, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)
OK, but how does one pronounce Goedel? Is it more gurdel than girdel? Paul Beardsell 08:18, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC)
This is all very interesting but I am at a loss: How does one pronounce "Go:dl"? Is that supposed to be SAMPA? Paul Beardsell 15:13, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
That's an awful IPA transcription. The problem is that the template IPAc-en takes the transcriptions from Help:IPA for English, and it doesn't include the phoneme /ɜː/, just /ɜːr/, because Wikipedia IPA reduces the set to the diaphonemes of the English language, and the phoneme /ɜː/ happens to be one that only occurs in non rhotic English variants, and is not considered a diaphoneme, but just a phonetic transcription of a non rhotic English variant. When you try to represent the phoneme /ɜː/ using IPAc-en, it transforms it to the diaphoneme /ɜːr/, making it impossible to render the referenced phonetic transcription (/ˈɡɜːdəl/). Am I right? Any idea? -- Gradebo ( talk) 15:24, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
If it were provable it would be wrong, so one could prove wrong statements in this system.
Is some punctuation missing here ?
Shyamal 11:12, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)
There is an often-repeated story about Godel's US citizenship interview, during which he began to describe the loophole he had found in the US Constitution, whereby the USA could be (legally) transformed into a dictatorship.
See for example this post from sci.math
1. Is it worth making some mention of this curious biographical detail in the article?
2. Is it recorded anywhere just what this "loophole" was? I have seen the anecdote in a number of different versions, but never any indication of how Godel's discovery was supposed to work.
It's very important to view Godel's fears within a historical context, which the author of the entry failed to provide. Godel had just witnessed Nazi Germany be transformed from a functional democracy into a hated dictatorship; and they gained their power partly because of a loophole in the German Constitution that made the Nazi takeover legal on paper, if not in practice.
Godel may have been an eccentric person, but he wasn't just being an eccentric. He'd just seen one country (legally) transformed into a dictatorship. He had no reason to assume it couldn't happen again. Warning the judge about it probably sounded like his civic duty as a potential citizen.
John W. Dawson Jr. apparently published "Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Gödel" in 1997, but there are several references to "Dawson 2005" in the article. What book is this referencing? Additionally, in the "legacy" section, it says Dawson published a book in 2005, however on Dawson's Wikipedia page, there is no mention of this book. Is there another book that was published in 2005 that was misattributed to Dawson? Is there another book that Dawson published that has a different title, and is missing from his wikipedia entry? There are definitely inconsistencies, however you look at it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:6000:8C41:7B00:B110:F915:B411:C726 ( talk) 08:25, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, it looks like that's it. 2605:6000:8C41:7B00:31EF:6FA4:3E5:91C6 ( talk) 21:03, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
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It seems the absence of worldview-context renders this Godel page meaningless: Cantor was a christian in his worldview, as was Godel. They destroyed the attempts by Whitehead and Russell and Hilbert to make mathematics a banner for atheism. Russell et al belonged to the age of reason, they believed in human reason above all else, whereas neither Cantor nor Godel shared this view, attributing knowledge instead ultimately to God. Hence Hilbert's plaintive cry of wir mussen wissen, Wir werden wissen, we shall know! Godel's thesis condemned the acolytes of reason to forever be in ignorance, due to the weakness of internal axioms. Casting this event purely in terms of mathematical symbols and jargon (as has been done) is rob the readers of it's meaning...EG: why is Godel one of the greatest logicians? Because he defeated the age of reason and ended modernity, with its faith in human reason, ushering in the post-modern. 7kingis ( talk) 09:04, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
The Wikipedia page on Kurt Gödel says that upon his birth, the family was in a German-speaking majority in Brünn, but in my book, Math & Mathematicians: The History of Math Discoveries Around the World (ISBN 0-7876-3813-7) claims that the family was in the German-speaking minority in Brünn. Which one is correct? Vincentupsdellred ( talk) 18:31, 15 December 2017 (UTC)
"The former result [i.e., the relative consistency of AxCh] opened the door for mathematicians to assume the axiom of choice in their proofs" seems to me to be misguided because mathematicians had been using the axiom of choice (knowingly or not) before Gödel's proof. 31.52.253.13 ( talk) 12:57, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
In the section "Princeton, Einstein, U.S. citizenship" it is claimed that, "To a lesser extent he studied Immanuel Kant …." However, according to Gödel’s remark of 1975, in answer to the question of influence on his thinking, he said, “Only Kant was important.” This does not seem as though he only studied Kant "to a lesser extent." Citation: Reflections on Kurt Gödel, Hao Wang, Cambridge, Massachusetts:MIT Press, 1995, p. 17. 96.248.116.130 ( talk) 23:09, 28 August 2019 (UTC)De’Andreay Williams
I'm surprised that no mention is made of Godel's ontological proof of God's existence: it is well known, even controversial, and the article explicitly mentionds Godel's theism multiple times. Is there a reason this isn't there that I'm missing? OldTimeNESter ( talk) 18:15, 16 November 2019 (UTC)