"Kevin Aylward"  wrote
in message news:bqtpe8$1sge$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Anthony Cerrato wrote:
> > "Paul P. Budnik Jr."  wrote in message
> > news:bqoo5l$9mn$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> >
> > [SNIPPED]
> >
> > I don't believe Goedel has anything to do with anything
> > outside of formal math.             ...tonyC
> >
>
> But most rational models of the world *are* based on math.
if we cant
> put numbers to something its difficult to say anything
about it
>
> Irrespective of whether one can apply Goedel to a
particular real world
> problem, what it presents is the very *idea* that there
can exist true
> statements but be unprovable. This means that in it may
well be
> impossible to derive everything about the world from
exiting knowledge.
> Before Goedel there was no reason to hold that this might
be the case.

Not so. Before Goedel, a number of things indicated this was
the case--3 words: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. By ca.
a few decades. Also, in history studies, it has long been
known that, since history is written by the winners, written
histories are highly unreliable, and thus it must be that
there can exist true
but unprovable statements about anything in the past (not to
even mention Einstein's demonstration of the speed of light
limitation on information transfer, making none of the past
accessible to direct observation, or review as "knowledge.")

While Turing's examination of the non-halting problem in
computers came slightly after Goedel's seminal work, the
idea that there were certain (non-linear) dynamic processes
that, even if all the information about the system state at
a given time were known (which QM shows is not possible
anyway) it would take infinite time to calculate ultimate
paths for the system state, i.e., the evolution of the
system itself is the fastest rate such knowledge can be
obtained.

Thus, many such ideas of "unknowability" were in the air
even long before Goedel, implying that, neither the past,
present, nor future can be accurately known or determined. I
might also add that a look at any number of Escher's old
drawings might also give one the intuitive feeling that it's
impossible to know everything in the world through sensory
observations alone.
:-))            ...tonyC

> Kevin Aylward
> salesEXTRACT{at}anasoft.co.uk
> http://www.anasoft.co.uk
> SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
> Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
> Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.
>
> http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/index.html
>
> "Understanding" itself requires consciousness,
> therefore consciousness cannot be "understood"
> without referring to itself for the explanation,
> therefore the "hard problem" of consciousness,
> is intrinsically unsolvable as it is self referral.
>
>
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